Sokoto to pay minimum wage, verifies unscheduled staff

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By Abdallah el-Kurebe, Editor 

Sokoto state government has reiterated its resolve to pay the N30,000 minimum wage, and to embark on a wide-scale staff audit with a view to weed out ghost and child workers, as well as large-scale employment syndicates.

Governor Aminu Tambuwal disclosed this Thursday evening, during the submission to the Governor, of the report by the on the implementation of new minimum wage and consequential adjustments. 

The Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Muhammad Bello, in a statement made available to Newsdiaryonline, says the report has pegged the wage bill at N324 million as against the sum of N340 million requested for by labour union in the state.

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While announcing that his administration will commence implementation of the minimum wage from January, Tambuwal scheduled a meeting of the state executive council meeting for Monday to consider the report.

“Government is poised to “embark on verification of unscheduled staff and the sharp practise of sale of employment letters to unwary citizens. A situation where children are on the payroll of the government will not be condoned,” the governor warned. 

Prior to the negotiation that ushered the new wage regime, the state government had discovered a disparity in the salary data between the state civil service commission, the ministry of finance and the the office of the head of service.

“This made me to look into the situation and we decided to harmonize all the data, leading up to the taking of steps to introduce the issuance of payslips to workers, a first in the history of the state,” Tambuwal explained.

As he promised to pay all the workers backlogs of salary as result of the meticulous process of the fiscal discipline embarked upon by the government, the governor commended the labour and those on the government side, who sat in the committee for their maturity, patience and patriotism to the people of the state.

In his remarks, the chairman of the minimum wage implementation committee, Alhaji Muhammad Namadina Abdulrahman, summarized the suggestions of the committee to the state government as “salary and skills assessment of staff, decentralization of salary payments and the establishment of a revenue generation system by the state government.”

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