NAN – The Kaduna State Government on Tuesday said payment of local council workers in the state for April would be delayed due to inadequate funds with which to pay them.
Mr Bashir Saidu, the Commissioner for Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs, announced this to newsmen in Kaduna at the end of the state Executive Council meeting.
He said that the government would only pay the salaries after the conclusion of its verification of the local council workers.
The commissioner said all the 23 local councils in the state received a cumulative amount of N2.1 billion from the federation account, which was not enough to settle workers salary of N2.4 billion.
“The April 2016 salaries for local government council and local education authority staff will be delayed until the committee working on the concluding phase of payroll verification for local governments completes its work.
“We express our regret for this delay, but we trust that local government workers will understand that real danger beckons if personnel costs continue to exceed revenues without any steps being taken to remedy it.”
Saidu also said that the government would scrutinise the allowances paid to the local council workers in order to remove those not entitled certain categories of allowances.
He hinted that the review of the allowances would mostly affect health workers collecting allowances they were not legally entitled to.
“For example health workers that are in urban areas and are not entitled to collect rural posting allowance would not be paid such allowance.”
He said that the current practice in which every worker in the system receives shift allowance would no longer continue.
