Workers under the Kogi State Social Investment Programme (SIP) have appealed to Gov Yahaya Bello to order the institution responsible for payments to offset their 5 months backlog salaries.
One of the staff of the SIP who spoke with our reporter over the weekend revealed that they were last paid October, 2018 and believe that the State Governor was not aware of their present predicament.
According to him, their efforts and efficiency in executing various social investments programmes earned the state SIP as the best in Nigeria, thereby wondering why they are being shortchanged.
“Recall that when the Vice President visited Kogi, he acknowledged that what he saw could be compared to none in all the other states he had visited. He also commended Kogi state government for running the social investment more organized than the federal government. Governor Yahaya Bello digitalized the SIP office and he has done great in terms of manpower.
“Despite all the efforts of the state governor, there are still some persons who are dream killers of the programme, hence subjecting us to hardship,” he lamented.
He added that their programmes are currently grounded as they can no longer do the routine monitoring and evaluation of beneficiaries, especially those under NPower.
“It is disheartening that we are experiencing this at a time we are ready to mobilise our beneficiaries and sensitized them on the need to fully support the continuity of this government. We are talking about 100,000 beneficiaries we successfully profiled for the various programmes,” he stated.
The workers appealed o the state governor to come to their aid and give a matching order to the institutions in charge of funding the office.
“We know that the governor was not aware of what is happening and that is why we are crying to him as the father of the state.”
