A statement by the governor’s Senior Special Assistant on Public Communication, Dr. Festus Adedayo, on Wednesday quoted him as making the plea during a meeting he held with the Alaafin of Oyo, Oba Lamidi Adeyemi; the Soun of Ogbomosho, Oba Jimoh Oyewumi; and the Olubadan of Ibadan who was represented by the Otun Olubadan, Chief Omowale Kuye, as well as some religious leaders and leaders of thought who paid him a courtesy call.
The governor told the leaders that while his government wished to pay the new minimum wage, he was constrained by several factors which included the fact that the new wage bill exceeds the total monthly revenue of the state.
Ajimobi said that the new minimum wage translates to N4.4bn monthly while the total revenue of the state including Federal Allocation and Internally Generated Revenue is N4.2bn.
The implication, he added, is that his government would be borrowing N200m monthly to enable it to pay workers’ salaries.
He said that apart from borrowing N200m monthly to pay workers’ salaries, his government would also find it difficult to actualise all the lofty programmes which he swore to provide for the people of the state.
The governor, the release said, told the traditional rulers and other leaders that he was anxious to pay the May salary of workers immediately and pay whatever is agreed upon with labour after appropriation by the House of Assembly.
The governor, who acknowledged that workers in Oyo State were among the worst-paid salary-earners in the South West, offered to bring their salaries at par with comparable states, beginning with Ekiti State.
“If the Ekiti State salary model is adopted, the new salary will increase workers’ wages by between 45 and 100 per cent, push up the wage bill by N800m per month and push the wage bill to N3.7bn,” the statement quoted the governor as saying.
Meanwhile, aggrieved workers from Bayelsa State Council of Arts and Culture on Wednesday trooped to the streets of Yenagoa, the state capital, to protest non-payment of allowances and bonuses.
The angry workers alleged that the Director-General of the state’s Council of Arts and Culture, Mr. Famous Eseduo, was the mastermind of their travails.
The Chairman of the Arts and Culture Union, Mr. Diepreye Solomon, accused Eseduo of diverting N10m meant for the settlement of some of the bonuses and allowances of the workers.
He said the state government appropriated and released the money for the state’s representatives at the 2009 Abuja Carnival but that Eseduo refused to pay them.
He also alleged that Eseduo abandoned his duties and neglected all the actors, actresses, singers and dancers that participated in the Abuja event.
By Olalekan Adetayo and Mike Odiegwu Courtesy Of: Punch
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