As a way of resolving all the salaries logjams, the Taraba state government has recently completed an exercise that saw it compiling an exhaustive list of all the primary school teachers in its services. This is with the aim of ascertaining genuine claimants. Salaries too have improved with the outstanding ones being what was carried over from the past. Yet, Governor Darius Ishaku is said to have swing into action to resolve all the challenges.
Making this known, the Senior Special Assistant to the governor on Public Affairs, Emmanuel Bello, said the current exercise is by far the “most effective measure taken to thoroughly address the issues of primary school teachers salaries with the aim of ensuring no authentic worker is shortchanged. We hold teachers in the highest esteem and would not sit and watch the moulders of our children’s life suffer, but we also have to practically clean out the proverbial Augean Stable.”
Bello noted that it would also be pertinent to properly situate the state’s salaries challenges. He said, ” we have to be clear that , first and foremost, the governor doesn’t play with the issue of salaries as he, more than anyone, is aware of the centrality of this in the lives of the people. His team too is aware of this and we are deeply concerned. To paint a picture as if we don’t care is unfair and wrong. The governor worries more than anyone and is working hard to tackle this challenge. Basically, the state doesn’t owe state workers. Most of the complaints are from the local governments which are, in principle, not in the purview of the state. But the state government has waded in because these are our citizens going through pains. We have to be clear about that. We are among some of the top states paying as and when due as far as civil servants at the state level are concerned. There are states owing state’s civil servants. Thankfully that is not the case here.”
Bello stressed that even with that, the state government is aware of the myraid of complains about non payment, especially at the local government level. While apologising and soliciting for understanding, Bello said, “we are really in pains when we hear these complains. So we are looking into the matters closely. Most of these problems emanated from government’s genuine move to rid the pay roll of frauds occasioned by the ghost workers phenomenon. With a biting recession, government couldn’t have allowed some of the illegalities perpetrated by pay clerks to continue. There was a cartel selling employment letters and what not. The salary wage bill was getting over bloated in spite of resignations or sadly, deaths. Clearly, there was a fundamental problem. And when you know the money from the federation purse has dropped, you would agree there was a need to stop the hemorrhage. There was a need for biometrics to determine real workers. The verification exercise, in some cases, led to a situation where some real workers were left uncaptured. This could be because of names variations and other details in data capture exercise. These are solvable problems. And we are addressing them everyday. As for primary school teachers, we have gone round the entire state with the grassroot teams in each wards where we made a comprehensive list of teachers in all the schools in the state. As we speak we have a comprehensive list and yes, some genuine teachers are being owed, no doubt. But the exercise has also put everything in perspectives for us and we would soon address everything.”
Bello said that the local governments are having issues with funds to properly address the issues of salaries, noting that the state is often coming to their aid. He said, “principally, local governments are often not able to meet their obligations. The state has to wade in. But I can authoritatively assure us that we are going to solve all the problems.”
