ITF: National Assembly raises eyebrow over  high recurrent expenditure

The joint Committee of the Senate and House of Representatives has expressed dismay at the high recurrent expenditure of the Industrial Training Fund, ITF and why the government agency is not on the Integrated Personnel Payment and Information System, IPPIS.

Specifically, the committee at the budget defence of the agency Friday looked at the N44.5 billion 2021 budget proposal of ITF which breakdown showed N39.4 billion earmarked for recurrent expenditure while only N4.9 billion is for capital projects.

The Chairman of the Joint Committee, Senator Saidu Alkali directed the ITF Director General, Joseph Ari to forward the staff nominal list and other relevant documents to communicate

However, the DG, Joseph Ari, speaking with journalists after the budget defence said the Industrial Training Fund, ITF operates the consolidated ITF salary structure approved by the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation & Fiscal Commission, RMAFC.

“Whatever recurrent expenditure that goes to the remuneration of the workforce is approved by RMAFC”, Ari said.

According to him “the ITF is top heavy because year in year out, on account of promotions, you will find out that the salaries will definitely go up. Not only that, even if a staff is not promoted, the fact that he moves by way of steps year in year out will render the salaries upward. That is basically the main reason.

“The ITF operates in line with the financial regulations of the Federal Government and ITF has one of the most accountable auditing and accountable systems.

Ari said although ITF is a Federal Government agency, the government doesn’t pay the staff salaries adding, that explains why ITF is not on IPPIS.

“ITF does not draw her salaries from the Federal Government treasury. The ITF pays it’s salary from its internally generated revenue, IGR. For that reason ITF is referred to as “partially funded organisation”.

Explaining further, the DG said “the money that comes from the Federal Government is not for personnel cost. It is meant for the students Industrial works experience scheme, SIWES to pay them. They are students from the universities, polytechnics, monotechnics and colleges of education.

“It is a whole gamut of a scheme where we have regulatory bodies: for the universities we have National Universities Commission, (NUC), for the polytechnics and monotechnics we have National Board for Technical Education, (NBTE) and for colleges of education we have National Commission for Colleges of Education, (NCCE). These are the regulatory bodies; the ITF merely midwifes the scheme on behalf of the Federal Government.

“For that purpose, the government remits this money by way of supervisory allowances, allowances to the students there. It has nothing to do with the remuneration of ITF.

To ensure that students get this allowances without any hitch, the DG said since he took over the mantle of leadership of ITF “we have continued to reengineer the SIWES”. According to him at the last biannual conference of SIWES held virtually, “a lot of things came to bear and a lot of delegates commended the ITF for rejigging the scheme, particularly online payment to students’ accounts which eliminated cash payment”.