PREMIUM TIMES NG
Workers in different federal establishments across the country have bemoaned the delay in the payment of their January salary, describing the action of the government as insensitive considering the current economic situation in the country.
Some of the workers said the delay is the worst in recent years, worse than they experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic when workers were asked to stay at home.
PREMIUM TIMES learnt that a memo from the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation had earlier notified the workers of the delay.
According to the memo, the accountant general’s office was working on finalising the 2024 Appropriation on the GIFMIS platform, and as a result the Personnel Warrant for the month of January 2024 was yet to be released.
The memo, it was learnt, stated that the delay would cut across Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs). It urged the affected members of staff to exercise patience while the issues were being sorted.
In Ekiti State, some of the workers who spoke with PREMIUM TIMES included staff of the Federal University, Oye Ekiti (FUOYE), Federal Polytechnic, Ado Ekiti; Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria (FRCN); National Orientation Agency (NOA), and Federal Ministry of Information, among others.
An official of FUOYE, Wole Balogun, said that with the hardship being faced by the people, it was inconceivable that salaries could be delayed longer than necessary.
Mr Balogun, who blamed the delay on an unnecessary bureaucratic bottleneck associated with the payment platforms, urged the federal government to expedite action on the payment, “because the situation is becoming unbearable.”
A staffer of the Federal Polytechnic, Ado Ekiti, Folashade Daramola, also lamented the delay. She noted that many members of staff have loan obligations that they ought to have paid as at when due, which have remained pending.
“We are finding it difficult to even go to work; after all, we depend on our salary to be able to transport ourselves, not to talk of feeding our families. We are tired of excuses, let them pay our salary,” Mrs Daramola said.
Also, Owoeye Ilesanmi, who is a staffer of the National Orientation Agency (NOA), said that in addition to delay in the payment of January salary, the federal government has reneged on the payment of the wage award.
“We have only received a wage award of two months, while three months is outstanding. The whole thing boils down to insensitivity on the part of the government. How do we survive without our salary and the wage award? I think the government should show empathy by paying us all the money they owe us,” he said.
The wage award is the allowance that the federal government promised to pay federal workers for six months to assuage the impact of the removal of subsidy on petrol. Following the subsidy removal and other government policies, prices of goods and services have more than doubled despite the non-increase in wages for many workers.
In Ibadan, Oyo State, another federal civil servant, Idris Badiru, while lamenting the delay in payment of January salary, described the situation as pathetic.
“January the 39th! Alagbase ti si oko gba bayi,” he wrote on his Facebook page, using a Yoruba terminology to indicate the lamentation of an unpaid worker.
