In a classic case of political double-speak, the Bayelsa State Government on Sunday faulted media reports alleging indebtedness of backlog of salaries to civil servants.
\nFor months, the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has repeatedly identified Bayelsa State government as belonging to the notorious club that includes Kogi, Benue, Osun, and Ekiti as worst offenders in owing workers.
\nRecently, NLC President, Mr. Aliyu Wabba said: “They have liability of between five and 12 months. I am aware that local government workers in the state have just resumed the action they suspended and we\u2019re putting that on our priority list.”
\nThe Congress has not ceased to identify the State as one of the mismanagers of the Paris Club refunds and the Federal Government Bail-out funds, as it relates to settling the emoluments of workers and pensioners.
\nBut the Bayelsa State Commissioner for Information and Orientation, Daniel Iworiso-Markson, in a statement made available to journalists in Yenagoa, claimed in one breath the State government was not indebted to workers, but in another admitted to cash flow constraints to meet its obligations.
\nHe debunked the falsehood by NLC, describing it as misleading and mischievous.
\nHe stated that a report in one of the national dailies qouting Wabba was done in bad faith because it lacked substance as it did not reflect the true position of things in the state.
\nAccording to him, the story was one-sided, adding that it was tantamount to a hatchet job to discredit the state government.\u00a0
\nThe Commissioner, however, stated that the government had been most concerned and had over time taken payment of staff seriously and did not owe the civil servants to date.\u00a0
\nIworiso-Markson said, “Those who authored the story failed to cross check their facts before going to press. Nobody called to get the state\u2019s side of the story which is unacceptable and clearly smacks of journalistic irresponsibility.”
\nHe explained that Bayelsa State Government, contrary to the report, remained one of the least indebted states in terms of salary arrears to its workers in the country.
\nThe Dickson-led Restoration Government, according to him, had always fulfilled its salary obligations until recently, because of the free fall in the state\u2019s monthly allocation from the Federal Government.
\nHe said government had to borrow a number of times to make up for the shortfall to ensure that salaries were paid.
\nHe further explained that while borrowing to pay salaries was not sustainable, the government decided to look inwards by taking steps to strengthen the Internal Revenue Board to improve on the state\u2019s Internally Generated Revenue profile.
\n\u201cAs at now, the government is not owing salaries of its workers in the civil service as we have kept faith with payment since beginning of the year till date”, he stated.
\nThe Commissioner however, observed that the situation was a national challenge as he said the Federal Government was also finding it difficult to meet its salary obligation to its workforce.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In a classic case of political double-speak, the Bayelsa State Government on Sunday faulted media reports alleging indebtedness of backlog of salaries to civil servants. For months, the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has repeatedly identified Bayelsa State government as belonging to the notorious club that includes Kogi, Benue, Osun, and Ekiti as worst offenders in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":5220,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5720"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5720\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}