Plateau commissioners, perm sec groan over lack of overhead

Political appointees especially Commissioners in Plateau State are groaning over lack of overhead in the past one and half years in running their respective ministries thus cripple activities of most ministries.

Some of the state Commissioners and Permanent Secretaries who spoke with Tribune Online on condition of anonymity said governmental activities in their respective ministries are lying prostrate and civil servants are unenthusiastic to work due to lack of fund to maintain some basic facilities.

“Apart from two or three commissioners that could be classified as super commissioners because of volume and nature of activities which are specialized and in high demand in our ministries, the rest of us are finding it difficult to run our respective ministries and we cannot use our paltry salaries to run these ministries, this more than anything else is slowing down governmental activities,” said one of the anonymous commissioners.

The State Commissioner of Information, Mallam Mohammed Nazif corroborated this recently at a press conference when he declared that in his 17 months in office as Commissioner, the Ministry received overhead cost only once.

“Many of you don’t know that, there is no way you can run a Ministry without an overhead. I have been in this office for one year, five months, I have received overhead cost only once in these seventeen months. The financial constraints is not only affecting you, it is also affecting the Ministry; not only my Ministry, so many other Ministries are affected. So this is the situation we are in.

Apparently reacting to the complaint, the State Governor Barrister Simon Lalong at a press conference to mark his two years in office confirmed the situation adding that as governor he has no overhead likewise other political office holders manning various MDAs.

“The Governor has no overhead, not only the ministries. We all agreed to manage what we are getting, salary is our priority. We cannot stop payment of salary. We must make sacrifice, this is not the time for overhead. They should also work toward generating revenue to take care of their needs. That is not to say we abandoned the ministries,” he said.

The governor also condemned the insinuation that most of his trips outside the country have not yield any success adding that quite a lot of memoranda of understanding have been signed with reputable investors while some of the moribund government companies inherited are back to life.