Minimum Wage: We’ll Weed out Ghost Workers in Sokoto Payroll before Implementation – Tambuwal
POLITICS DIGEST – Sokoto state government has set to embark on workers audit to verify and detect ghost workers in the state before it starts the payment of N30,000 minimum wage.
The state Governor Aminu Waziri Tambuwal made the disclosure Thursday night at the signing and submission of the report by the state committee on the implementation of the new minimum wage and consequential adjustments.
This, he said would also ensure that no child worker and bogus employment offers syndicates in the state system.
The committee was established by the state government to thrash out the new minimum wage and consequential adjustments matter respectively.
However, the wage bill of the state according to a statement by Muhammad Bello, Special Adviser Media and Publicity to the governor will now be above N324 million as against the sum of N340 million requested for by labour union collective in the state.
In the statement, Governor Tambuwal while announcing that his administration will commence implementation of the minimum wage from this month, disclosed that a meeting of the state executive council has been scheduled for Monday to consider the report.
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According to him, ” the government is poised to embark on the verification of unscheduled staff and the sharp practise of sale of letters offers of employment to unwary citizens,” also stressing that “a situation where children are on the payroll of the government will not be condoned.”
Although, 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 office of the head of service.
“This made me 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.
However, while promising to pay workers owed backlogs of salary as a result of the meticulous process of the fiscal discipline measures embarked upon by the state government, Tambuwal hitherto, commended the labour collective 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, Alhaji Muhammad Namadina Abdulrahman, gave summarised 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.
