Business
Ekiti Govt Pays N660m Interest On Workers’ Loans
The Ekiti State Government pays N660 million annually as interest on the various loans given to its civil servants, Mr Taiwo Olatunbosun, the Commissioner for Information and Civic Orientation, has said.
The commissioner said this in Ado Ekiti on Saturday, following last week’s announcement by Gov. Segun Oni that the workers in the state owed the government about N3.345 billion as housing, land and car loans.
Olatunbosun explained that the consolidated loan portfolio of the workers amounting to N3.345 billion constituted more than 60 per cent of the total borrowings of the state government of N5.531 billion.
“The financial burden accruing from the loan schemes for the civil servants in Ekiti State is that the state government is currently paying N660 million annually as interest on the funds being utilised for the schemes,” he said.
He said that the entire people of Ekiti, consisting of more than 2.5 million citizens, were being made to subsidise the loans of less than 50 per cent of the public service, excluding primary school teachers.
He, however, reiterated the government’s commitment to the welfare of workers in the state, stressing that the government would sanitise the arbitrary disbursement of loans as it could no longer bear the burden “due to the current global economic crises”.
The commissioner said that the salaries of workers not indebted to the state under any of the land, housing and car loan schemes would be paid immediately, while those that complied with the rules and regulations relating to the scheme would be paid after the government had determined the level of subsidy it could afford.
Olatunbosun noted that the reform was not to witch-hunt or impoverish its human resources but to sanitise the entire system and purge the civil service of fraudulent loans “that had become a huge burden on the economy of the state”.
The government spokesman added that some workers took advantage of the good intention of the Oni administration, exemplified by the increase in the loans obtainable, by obtaining more than the cumulative amount they were lawfully entitled to.
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