Employees in the Federal
Civil Service in Akwa Ibom State have lamented the non-payment of parts of their salaries in 2012 due to a system failure in the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System.
It was learnt that the system failure had led to irregularities that resulted in some staff members either being overpaid or underpaid up to three months.
Some of the affected employees spoke with newsmen in Uyo recently, saying that in spite of assurances from the office of the Accountant General of the Federation to correct the anomaly, they were still being owed as the affected months in 2012 had not reflected in their current salaries.
A member of the group, who didn’t want his name in print, said they had complied with directives from their various offices for those who were overpaid to refund the excess, adding that the order had been obeyed for the sake of addressing the issue.
He said, “In January 2012, as a fallout from the new payroll system IPPIS, there was a massive system failure to the extent that some workers received two, some three months salary alerts in one month. Some workers were not paid at all while others were underpaid and others overpaid. Some were not paid for three months.
“Assurance came later that all the lapses would be rectified before May 2012. But then a circular came from the office of the AGF instructing all who received more than one month salary alert to refund the excess otherwise March 2012 salary will be withheld.
“Such people were asked to go to the office of the AGF or the Central Bank of Nigeria in the states and pay into a particular account and forward the evidence of such payment to IPPIS desk office in their establishments. While the process was on March salaries of such people who were withheld.
“It is, however, regrettable to note that some of us even after having fulfilled all these conditions as far back as May 2012, our salaries are yet to be paid to us. This money is running into millions of naira and affected workers cut across almost all the ministries and MDAs.”
According to him, there were assurances that the unpaid salaries would be included in the 2013 budget, which was not done.
He revealed that with the proposed merger of agencies it could be more difficult for their unpaid salaries to be processed and refunded as some of the affected employees have retired.
He said, “In 2013, we were told that the money has been returned to treasury and it has to be included in the budget for it to be released, but 2013 budget has since been approved and nothing in this direction has been heard from the AGF office.
“More disturbing is the fact that workers in some of the agencies affected have retired, some are about to retire while some agencies will go into merger with other agencies making it even more difficult for us to follow the process.
“We are afraid that we could lose our hard earned salaries to another scam akin to the infamous pension scam and so we are calling on relevant authorities to address our plight.”