Benue: Headache of a bloated wage bill

FOR decades Benue State has struggled to cut down on its huge wage bill without success even as more people continued to be recruited into the state civil service. JOHNSON BABAJIDE writes that this time Governor Samuel Ortom is determined to deal a decisive blow on the problem.

BENUE State is not the richest state in Nigeria; its Internally generated revenue is nothing to write home about. In fact the sobriquet of being the food basket of the nation is fast fading away, not thanks to the recurrent clashes between farmers and herdsmen. But according to the national Bureau of statistics, it is the state with the third largest wage bill in the country, a sum of N7.8 billion monthly.

Thus when Governor Samuel Ortom came into office, one of his biggest worries was how to cut the huge wage bill and still be able to deliver on his election promises to the people. Since his assumption of office on May, 29, 2015, Ortom has been battling to wriggle out of the quagmire of irregular payment of monthly salary occasioned by the bloated wages.

Determined to confront the problem headlong, Governor Ortom decide to do what others were afraid to do. The administration embarked on several staff auditing down to the local government level to reduce the bill to about N4.5 billion. The process had not been successful; the state labour unions allegedly had been rebuffing the efforts.

Not perturbed by the seeming failure to achieve its objectives, the state government constituted a new verification exercise committee, this time headed by the deputy governor of the state, Benson Abounu.

In the interim report the committee chairman recently made an oral presentation to the stakeholders showing the rots that have pervaded both the state and local government services.

The deputy governor in his report had submitted that aside padding of salaries by a cabal in the civil service, the committee discovered several anomalies that could have been responsible for the huge wage bill.

For instance, according to Abounu, in ministries and parastatal agencies, every worker, including office assistants, collects shift allowance whether on shift duty or not. Staffers of tertiary institutions in the state also collect SIWESS allowance every month instead of once a year. In addition, students of non-accredited courses were always mobilised for SIWESS.

Furthermore it was discovered that though the state government had placed embargo on recruitment into civil service several years ago, every successive administration had continued to engage workers. The only time approval was granted to fill vacant positions, according to Abounu was in October, 2006 under the administration of George Akume when about 7,746 local government staff were recruited drawing a total salary of N530 million.

“At local government level, when we carried out screening exercise, many came up with papers which added to 20,976 workforce. The additional figure is 7,746 staff and these people were recruited with no approval,” Abounu said.

It was also discovered that retired staff often return to the civil service as contract staff, sometimes spend additional 10 years. The committee plans to extend the screening exercise to the state university, where the number of non-teaching staff is allegedly very huge. The options therefore were either to slash salaries or number of staff.

Part of the interim measures, according to Abounu, was to among others convert medical students of Benue origin on total monthly salary of N144million to government scholarship; abolish contract staffing in the state and embark on modified table payment to further discover ghost workers.

Other measures include screening of pensioners last screened two years ago, laying off contract staff of Benue Internal Revenue Service, BIRS, that were converted to full and doing away with medically unfit staff.

This time there is no going back. According to Governor Ortom at a media briefing last Wednesday the wage bill must go down from N7.8 billion to N4.5 billion, adding that no amount of intimidation would stop him.

“Two years is enough time to strategize and put things right. The worker deserves its wages and we should not muzzle the axe that threaded the corn. The salary issue is beyond me. I have not been sleeping or comfortable but finding solution on how we can surmount this. The bible equally said that those who do not work should not eat. We have done everything possible on the issue of salaries.”

“We realized that  we needed to do something more drastic and a committee on staff verification and biometrics was set up and  after  analyzing the situation in the country, we decided that for us to be comfortable with the allocation accruing to the state and the state IGR, we must reduce  our wage bill to N4.5billion in the state. If this is done, bona fide workers can get their salary before month ends.”

 

Stakeholders’ Support:

One time senator, Jack Gyado described irregular payment of salary in bemuse state as the bad leg Ortom inherited from the previous administration.

“Benue was not created for workers alone but for everyone,” he stated, while urging the government to reduce salary by 50 per cent but not the workforce.

One time local government chairman under Peoples Democratic Party, PDP,  Godwin Donkwo, also threw his weight behind the state government, urging Ortom’s administration not to downsize but weed out illegal staff on the pay roll.

Former minister of state for education during the Umaru Yar’Adua’s administration, Professor Jerry Agada commended the state government while also canvassing removal of ghost workers from government pay roll.

Former governor, George Akume, said should the state government retrench it won’t be a strange measure since both Atom Kpera and Obademi both military governors at one time or the other reduced the state workforce out of necessity.

“We need to correct the mistake. During Shagari administration, the then governor of Imo State,  Sam Mbakwe, came out with IMO formula; whoever loves this state will support this,” he said.

“Even as small as my local government (Tarka) I never interfered in the affair there,  yet that local government has huge workforce of over one thousand workers. We need to correct these anomalies and clean the system for successive administration to operate,” Akume concluded.

Leaders of organised labour in the state, Comrades  Godwin Anyan and Ordue Tartenger of Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC)  and Trade Union Congress (TUC) respectively while reacting separately said that they were yet to be officially informed of the proposal.

The state TUC boss described the meeting as “political” which he said had no effect on workers for now until the state government holds a meeting with labour leaders and formally informs them.

He asked rhetorically if there was anywhere in the world where salary is negotiated downward, especially at the time federal government had set up committee on another increment in wages. He however supported the move by state government to wield out ghost workers in the state as well as those who have overstayed in the civil service.

“In fact, I have never seen where salary is negotiated downward and besides while workers are already agitating for increment in salary.

“There is no problem if government discovers  ghost workers and decides to remove them or those who have overstayed in service but we will resist any attempt to sack genuine workers in the state,” Tartenger submitted.

Anyan said that labour leaders were waiting for formal invitation by state government to avail them of its plan.