Between the wage bill, the greed and the politics of lies, excuses and deceptions.
By Uche Aguoru
Needless to re-echo the already established natural law, corroborated by the Quran and the bible, THAT A WORKER DESERVES HIS/HER WAGES, it has also been acculturated, though ironically, that those we elect to serve us have turned to become overlords and has chosen to eat up even the little that belongs to all of us.
In as much as I have become used to the lies and deceptions associated with the present administration of Dr. Okezie Ikpeazu over workers salaries, I had expected that the governor will exhibit some nobleness by keeping to his promises on the clearance of the outstanding workers salaries by end of July of 2017.
That Dr. Okezie Ikpeazu PhD, and the commissioner for finance Mr Obinna Oriaku have debased the nobleness of leadership by continually being untruthful and playing politics with the salaries/wages of the Abia civil servants as if workers salaries and wages is a favour and not a right, is pathetically horrific and highly condemnable.
What I have found very difficult to fathom, is how a government will tie the wage bill of its workers on some unexpected and unbudgeted for free funds, is it not a mark of laziness and administrative incompetence that a government is unable to fashion out a structured means of paying the people that provide essential administrative services required to drive the affairs of the government? The literal implication is that the Ikpeazu administration has no plans for workers welfare.
Almost every section of the Abia workforce is being owed salaries ranging from 5 months to nine months, the last time pensioners received payment from the state government was September 2016, the local government workers are being owed between 5-6 months salaries, that of the local government is a case of greed, misappropriation and corruption as the allocation due every local government from the federation account would have been enough to offset their salaries as at when due, if they had been allowed control of their funds,
While our teachers both at the secondary and primary schools are crying over an outstanding 6 months’ salary being owed them.
Abia poly received their last alert as at January 2017, while staff of Abia state university teaching hospital and school of health technology had not received salaries since January till date, ASUBEB is being owed for 5 months, Abia line and other Parastatals and Agencies are being owed from 7 months up, in salaries.
The painful aspect is that the government rather than show sympathy is politicizing the salaries of Abia workers, by always coming up with excuses as to why they will be unable pay the workers, the lies and propaganda department of Government house Umuahia will immediately jump out to justify the starving of Abia workers by citing fellow never do well state governors, who have not been meeting up with salary payments, but will never tell you that Cross river state pays its workers by middle of the month, Gov. Ikpeazu’s media aides will never let you know that Anambra, Ebonyi and some other neighboring states are up to date with salary payments and are even giving out bonuses to civil servants having appropriated the funds received for such purposes rightly, it is only in Abia that a committee will be set, before one month out of six months salaries owed civil servants will get to them.
One of the campaign promises of Dr. Okezie Ikpeazu PhD is that he will ensure regular payment of salaries and even went ahead to attach a date to it ‘’24th’’ of every month, since the Okezie Ikpeazu administration came on board, Abia has received in bailout funds and Paris club refunds a total of 31.30353174297 Billion Naira, these monies are inflows outside of the regular FAAC, JAC and IGR, let it be noted, that it is not a part of our regular budgeting for salaries and wages, it is what we can describe in our local phraseology as ‘’JARA’’ which came with a direct instruction from the
