The Kogi State governor, Capt. Idris Wada, on Thursday, explained the reason behind the inability of his administration to pay its workers lately, saying government had been depending on overdraft and other facilities from banks to meet its obligations to the workers.
The governor disclosed that the state has been obtaining bank facilities to augment the shortfall from the federation account to pay salaries since June last year, saying that the banks have stopped the facilities which militated against the regular payment of workers’ salaries.
Wada said this in Lokoja, the state capital, during the official inauguration ceremony of the construction of N4.6 billion graded separation Interchange (flyover) bridge at the Ganaja junction in Lokoja metropolis.
According to the governor, government had met organised labour leaders over the non-payment of the workers’ salary, blaming the situation on the dwindling allocation of the collective funds coming to the state from the Federation Account.
Wada stated that the banks stopped granting the facilities to facilitate the payment of workers salary, adding that government was still owing the banks of some arrears of overdraft, resulting from servicing workers salary in the past.
“Allocation accrued to the state has been below what we need to pay salaries. We’ve been financing this by borrowing money from banks using overdraft and short term loans. At this point the banks decided that they cannot extend further credit to us. With accruals of deficit over five months, you can understand why at this time we don’t have money to pay.
“And that is why we applied for bailout. The bailout was approved more than four months ago, and all our efforts to have the bailout funds released, have not yielded fruit. We don’t understand why politics should enter the salary payment of our people here in the state. It is very unfortunate. But I assure you that, up to the last day, the last minute of the last hour, I will continue to make efforts to ensure that our workers are paid.
