President Tinubu, fails civil servants woefully, like never before.
Federal workers slam FG over unprecedented delay in salary payments
Workers in different federal establishments across the country have bemoaned the delay in the payment of their January salaries, describing the action of the government as insensitive considering the current economic situation in the country.
Some of the workers said the delay is the worst in recent years, worse than they experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic when workers were asked to stay at home.
It was learnt that a memo from the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation had earlier notified the workers of the delay.
According to the memo, the accountant general’s office was working on finalising the 2024 Appropriation on the GIFMIS platform, and as a result the Personnel Warrant for the month of January 2024 was yet to be released.
The memo, it was learnt, stated that the delay would cut across Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs). It urged the affected members of staff to exercise patience while the issues were being sorted.
A staff member of the federal ministry of information told our corespondent that workers in the ministry, including agencies under it like VON, NAN, FRCN, NOA, among many others have yet to receive any salaries, as well as the federal government’s wage awards this year, stressing that this was worrisome, strange and insensitive of the new government of President Bola Tinubu.
”This never happened under Buhari, Jonathan, Yar’Adua and Obasanjo.
“It is very callous and insensitive for Tinubu’s government to treat us this way after inflicting the worst form of economic hardships on the people upon taking over the reins of power eight months ago.
”The new government is fast losing the people’s support in this regard and it is too early for this kind of nonsense,” she fumed.
In Ekiti State, for instance, some of the workers who included staff of the Federal University, Oye Ekiti (FUOYE), Federal Polytechnic, Ado Ekiti; Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria (FRCN); National Orientation Agency (NOA), and Federal Ministry of Information, among others, slammed Tinubu’s government over the unprecedented delay in salary payments in decades.
An official of FUOYE, Wole Balogun, said that with the hardship being faced by the people, it was inconceivable that salaries could be delayed longer than necessary.
Mr Balogun, who blamed the delay on an unnecessary bureaucratic bottleneck associated with the payment platforms, urged the federal government to expedite action on the payment, “because the situation is becoming unbearable.”
A staffer of the Federal Polytechnic, Ado Ekiti, Folashade Daramola, also lamented the delay. She noted that many members of staff have loan obligations that they ought to have paid as at when due, which have remained pending.
“We are finding it difficult to even go to work; after all, we depend on our salary to be able to transport ourselves, not to talk of feeding our families. We are tired of excuses, let them pay our salary,” Mrs Daramola said.
Also, Owoeye Ilesanmi, who is a staffer of the National Orientation Agency (NOA), said that in addition to delay in the payment of January salary, the federal government has reneged on the payment of the wage award.
“We have only received a wage award of two months, while three months is outstanding. The whole thing boils down to insensitivity on the part of the government.
“How do we survive without our salary and the wage award? I think the government should show empathy by paying us all the money they owe us.
”Yet the same federal government just last week promptly paid the bonus allowances of N42 million to each of the already billionaire Super Eagles players playing at the AFCON in Ivory Coast; where is the government’s humanity?” He asked rhetorically.
The wage award is the allowance that the federal government promised to pay federal workers for six months to assuage the impact of the removal of subsidy on petrol.
Following the subsidy removal and other government policies, prices of goods and services have more than doubled despite the non-increase in wages for many workers.
