DELAYS IN PLATEAU STATE CIVIL SERVICE SALARIES The much outcry about state civil servants salaries delay had taken public attention in recent times to the extend that some politicians sees it as a campaign material. This peace is written in good conscience to enlighten those that need to know the truth more so salary delays are ignorantly equated to my public service role as the State Statistician General. May I note here that this piece is not for political pundits of the APC extraction and bad losers in the PDP, because they never appreciate truth but continually clown around English syntax and promotion of ethnic, religious and geographical divisions. The problem of delays in salaries is directly related to the drastic drop in state revenue accrued from federal subventions. This reality took its toll on virtually all the states of the federation, which consequently affect staff salary payment of more that 50% of the states including Plateau. The present problem started around May/June 2014, the subvention dropped drastically to the effect that State Commissioners of Finance walked out of the Federal Allocation Committee (FAC) meetings; till date, the situation remained unchanged. Plateau State pays all 72 MDAs a whooping monthly salary of approximately One Billion, Seven Hundred Million Naira (N1.7b) from an average monthly state subvention of about N3b leaving a balance of about N1.2b to take care of administrative and capital expenditure. With this drop in state subvention, Plateau barely get a little above N2b. This call for re-strategising state financial spending’s including salaries. Note also that each month subvention comes in arrears. For example, January subvention are computed and paid mid February, that of February in March etc. So technically we were paying salaries at the end of each month from savings we had in the salary account; so if from July 2014 Plateau State Government pays less than N1.7b monthly into the salary account consistently to Nov 2014 subvention, the balance in the salary account will sure be depleted. The state financial managers developed a savvy process of paying as much MDAs as can be paid each month so that those MDAs not paid are prioritized in the proceeding month and also paid amongst MDAs the balance can carry. The resultant scenario ensures that salaries are paid regardless; the down part is that some MDAs may be delayed in a given month with an upside they are treated first in the subsequent month. The situation of salary delay at the state level is regrettable and its not in the character of Governor Jang led government. You may wish to recall that this government came in to inherit a civil service demotivated with more than six month unpaid salaries and poor working environment. The Governor paid all the backlogs of salaries; gratuities and pensions amounting to billion of naira when previous government claimed these are not do-able. The State secretariat for the first time since its construction is receiving massive renovation and modeling. Clearly this goes to tell all discerning persons that the present delay in salaries is regrettable and not deliberately intended. Ironically, many political opportunists would want us to believe differently. It is equally worthy at this stage to note that salaries alone takes more that 60% of federal subvention. The implication is that the about 16,500 staff is the state civil service eats up more than 60% of the revenue leaving the more than 3.5m other citizens of plateau benefit from the balance in terms of projects. The future as I see it is to structure the state civil service is the way of manageability by automation and to call on all Plateau citizens to answer the patriotism call on tax payment. Many pundits and noisemakers even on this forum have not paid their taxes. I know that most of these noisemakers are defaulters and will always be the first to shout holy cow on government inability to pay salaries. We must first be patriotic by paying our taxes and then make the noise so that our state standouts like Lagos State. Let me challenge your conscience, do you have an active tax clearance certificate? If you don’t, please never mind commenting to this post for the sake of the unpaid staff, go and pay your tax and obtain a valid tax clearance certificate NOW! We all owe it a responsibility to built our internally generated revenue so that we don’t depend on statutory allocation from federation account to pay our hard working staff.
Posted on: Mon, 29 Dec 2014 14:58:47 +0000
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