RSG And Payroll System

The news that the Rivers State Government has taken over the administration of the payroll for civil servants from Zenith Bank must have come to many stakeholders as a big relief.

The Commissioner for Finance, Dr Chamberlain Peterside, who announced the development at the opening of the new payroll office, stated that the new payroll regime would address the issue of ghost workers and ghost salaries. Besides, pay slips would now be issued to workers as a way of guiding them in ascertaining the true state of their income.

This development, which is in compliance with the desires of the people of the state and the staff of the Ministry of Finance in particular could not have come at a better time. We recall that the payroll administration was handed over to Zenith Bank to curb the high incidence of ghost workers in the salary bill of the state, a development which sent some unpatriotic accounts staff of the Finance Ministry smiling to the banks with prodigious unearned incomes.

We also recall that with the handling of the payroll by the bank since inception of this administration, some improvement in terms of checking ghost workers was initially achieved. This resulted in the saving of hundreds of millions of naira recovered from ghost names expunged from the state pay bill.

However, the jubilation over the savings had hardly subsided before some genuine civil servants in the state suddenly became dubbed as ghost workers with their names omitted from the salary computation system and their salaries unpaid for some months. Sadly,  omissions and errors were difficult to correct under the system while the actual number of civil servants in the state varied even within government offices.

This resulted in some confusion and hardship for workers whose salaries were affected to get answers.

Thus, with the state government taking over its constitutional responsibility, such snags in pay administration as experienced when the Zenith Bank operated the payroll, may now be over.

Hence, the Commissioner of Finance and his team deserve much commendation for  the new payroll system has the capacity to address genuine complaints of underpayments and overpayments since pay slips would be issued to workers.

This being the case, there is no doubt that a new regime of responsibility which was hitherto denied staff of the ministry would be reintroduced. Given that the salary administration was removed from the staff of the ministry following complaints of their corrupt manipulation of salary bills, it is our expectation that with the new development, the concerned staff would work with much integrity and honesty.

The people and government of the state do not deserve anything less, because the need to block all sources of revenue wastage and drainage would never be required at a better time than now as the   government needs all the revenue it could muster to complete on-going projects and initiate new ones.

The Tide therefore, enjoins the civil servants on whose shoulders this new responsibility would fall to discharge their duties with all honesty and integrity in order to justify the confidence reposed in them.

The people and government of the state deserve nothing less, as the laws of the land would be visited on those who think that dishonesty is a way of life.