Cross River State government has expressed its resolve to sanitise the payroll of the state’s workforce, which is currently blighted by several infractions.
The Head of Service (HoS) of the state, Dr Innocent Eteng, conveyed the government’s position during a press briefing with journalists in Calabar, yesterday.
The state payroll has, in recent weeks, become a subject of public discourse, where the state’s workforce has skyrocketed from a little above 18,000, at the end of former Governor Liyel Imoke’s administration in 2015, to a staggering 56,358 as of May 29, 2023, leaving an over-bloated wage bill for the Governor Bassey Otu-led administration to deal with.
A further breakdown of the 56,358 workforce by Eteng revealed that the State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB) has 14,328 staff, Primary Health Care Development Agency, 2,812, State Civil Service, 22,526, pensioners, 19,701, Local Government Service, 4,131 and Traditional Rulers Council, 2,860.
The HoS stated that Otu has kept his promise of prompt payment of salaries, and has done so up-to-date, except for a few civil servants whose names could not be reconciled on the nominal roll and payroll. He, however, notified Cross Riverians that there is an ongoing strategic cleanup of the state payroll, driven by his office and the Accountant General, to rid the system of ambiguities.
MEANWHILE, following this development, Eteng has warned that 80 per cent of the state’s workforce may not be paid March 2024 salaries.He said that this is sequel to flagrant disregard of the government’s directives by permanent secretaries and directors of administration of Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) to submit nominal rolls of their MDAs to his office and the office of the Accountant General.
The Head of Service noted that out of the 31 MDAs in the state, only eight have so far submitted their payroll for reconciliation and clearance for payment of March salaries, adding that workers in the MDAs that have refused to comply with the directive would not be paid March salaries.
