” We Will Occupy The Ministry Of Local Govt And CR Head Of Service Office Till…” CR NLC

Chairman of the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, in Cross River State, John Ushie, has come clear that Labour will ensure that the Ministry of Local Government and Office of the Head of Service, CRS, remains under lock and key until the Cross River State Government clears her statutory financial obligations to all categories of staff in the Local Government system in the state.

Ushie who spoke exclusively with www.calitown.com, further revealed that it was shocking to see that those in the Office of the Head of Service and the Ministry of Local Government, charged with the responsibility of making sure that “people in the local government councils are paid, constantly demonstrate a nonchalance to discharging this function, something that is both annoying and most regrettable. They cannot continue to double speak on this issue when the evidence shows clearly that several civil servants in the LG system are owed salaries and another considerable number suffer because of the irregularities that have been maliciously injected into the payroll system”.

On the vexed issue of consultants, contracted by the state government to verify salary figures in the LG system, Ushie condemned in strong terms the work done so far by the consultants and expressly demanded that the state government must do away with the consultants because of their demonstrable lack of professional capacity to do the job. “You can imagine that for image capturing across the 18 LGAs in the state, the consultants were capturing images with their smartphones. They did not have proper image and data capturing equipment… that is just one example. Now a lot of our people are suffering. Can you also imagine that people in Cross River State collect pay slips and Government of Anambra State is inscribed on these slips? So because the consultants worked in Anambra state and did not exhaust whatever customized materials they used in working there, when they came to our state they had not the common sense to customize materials for Cross River State but tacitly re-christened us as Anambra state, it is very sad”.

He also disclosed that Labour wants the state government to revert to the Integrated Personnel Payroll System, IPPS, of the Liyel Imoke administration, which has been tested and proven overtime, so that the sufferings that most civil servants in the state are currently going through, will be taken away.

We were unable to get reactions from Techvibes Nigeria Ltd, the consultants at the centre of the storm at press time.