Abia May Sack Council Workers

Speaker of Abia State House of Assembly, Chief Agwu U.Agwu, says the bloated workforce of local governments in the state must be reduced to save the system from imminent collapse.

 Agwu told newsmen Monday in Umuahia that government, in conjunction with relevant stakeholders, particularly the National Union of Local Government Employees (NULGE),  would workout modalities for the retrenchment exercise next year to reduce the bloated workforce of the various local governments which had made salary payment difficult in the face of dwindling resources.

 Almost all the 17 local government areas in the state this year experienced difficulties in paying staff salaries and Agwu attributed this to paucity of funds accruing to the local governments from the federation account. He also identified huge wage bill for primary school teachers in the councils which gulps half of the allocations to the local governments and bloated workforce of the councils as being responsible for the near grounding of the local government system in the state.

 The Speaker, in buttressing the bloated wage bill of the councils said the monthly wage bills of  Isiala Ngwa North and Arochukwu local governments were below N20 million respectively as at February 2007. Today, he said, the wage bill has jumped to over N48 million for Arochukwu and about N40 million for Isiala Ngwa North.

 “I feel bad each time I think about the local governments. The chairmen are not happy that they could not pay salaries to workers they have worked with for the past two years,” the Speaker exclaimed, as he explained discrepancies between what is published in the media as allocations to the local governments and the actual amount that finally gets to them.

 According to him, the Revenue Moblisation and Fiscal Allocation Committee, deducts at source, salaries of primary school teachers before remitting whatever was left to the councils. He also explained that the Assembly passed some laws that have necessitated deductions of certain amounts from the councils at source and whatever was left is passed onto the councils, stressing that such amount hardly pays salaries of council workers.

 Agwu said that last month, the 17 local governments in the state received a total of N1.5billion with N750 million deducted at source for salaries of primary school teachers. He said the balance which was shared among the councils could not pay salaries. “If you are a local government chairman, if your wage bill is N48 million naira and you receive an allocation of N8 million for three months consecutively, what are you going to do,” he asked rhetorically.

 He, however, said that the council chairmen were not totally free from blame as he pointed out that he had advised them to be prudent in the management of funds when the excess crude fund started flowing in. “They embarked on massive projects” which they found difficult to continue with when the excess crude purse began drying up,” he observed.