Almost a year after the minimum wage act was signed, civil servants in Delta State are in deep confusion on whether the state government will implement the wage increase or not.
The uncertainty that surrounds the implementation of the minimum wage act for all cadres of civil servant in Delta state has been further heightened by different statements credited to the state governor, Dr. Emmanuel Uduaghan .The governor who had on Monday April 11,2011 told a cross section of local government workers at Delta State PDP Campaign Council Headquarters in Asaba prior to his re-election that “any chairman who refuses to pay the new wage should be arrested” only recently ,told Deltans at the DBS Asaba phone-in -programme shortly after a medical trip abroad that “itis not yet time to agitate for minimum wage” but time for everyone to cut down their expenditure.
The governor’s recent statement which attracted fury, especially among civil servants in the state, came as a shock to the civil servants after the governor had a few months earlier told journalists in Warri at a breakfast meeting that he will direct immediate implementation of the minimum wage act since “it is only five hundred naira remaining”.
As at the time of this report, workers in the state have no clear picture of what the new wage structure is and there are wagging tongues over the silence by labour leaders in the state regarding the non implementation of the new wage act, despite its implementation instates such as Edo and Imo whose monthly federal allocations are nothing compared to Delta.
Politicians are equally not left out in the cloud of uncertainty as their expectation for the announcement of local government caretaker committees keep rising and falling.
A former Councilor in one of the local governments told Fresh Angle that their confusion is further worsened by the fact that no provision was made for the conduct of local government election in 2012 budget. According to him, should the governor appoint caretaker committees there is likelihood that they may stay in office more than the speculated three months, except a supplementary budget is passed for the sole purpose of the local government polls.
The cloud on whether caretaker committees will be appointed or fresh elections will be conducted for new chairmen in the local governments has created a situation where Heads of Personnel Management of the councils only pay salaries without executing projects while they wait endlessly for political heads.
It would be recalled that the tenure of 23 local government chairmen in the state elapsed May 2011 and the most Senior Admin Officers in the affected local councils have been piloting affairs.
By:Tonebsky Nesta