Staff of 23 out of the 96 Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) in Sokoto State may not receive their April salaries for failure to meet the April 11 deadline for the submission of the Bank Verification Numbers (BVN) of their various workers.
Speaking to newsmen in Sokoto Friday, the Head of the Service (HOS) in the state, Alhaji Bature Shinkafi, said the state government had early this month directed all the agencies and ministries to submit the BVN numbers of all their workers latest by April 11.
He stated that at the close of the deadline on April 11, only 73 agencies were able to meet the deadline, while 23 others failed to do so.
”The state government had also directed that any MDA that failed to meet the deadline will not get the April salaries of its workers.
“In fact, the affected workers will only get their April salaries after facing a special verification committee of reputable people, “Shinkafi said.
He disclosed that a committee which will soon be set up would receive the details of the service records of the affected workers, after which they would be paid their salaries.
Shinkafi emphasised that the exercise was not aimed at witch-hunting anybody but rather to ascertain the actual staff strength and wage bill of the state government.
He explained that the staff strength of the state government now stood at about 26,000, with an average monthly wage bill of over N 1.6 billion, adding that the exercise was aimed at sanitising the state civil service, as well as blocking all areas of leakages of the state government’s incomes which are becoming leaner by the day.
“The state government wants to avoid a situation where all its incomes goes to the payment of salaries, as this ugly trend will certainly incapacitate the state government from executing projects in the state,” he added.
