FG begins payment of workers’ N23bn salary, arrears

The Federal Government has commenced the payment of N23bn salary shortfall and promotion arrears to civil servants.

The Accountant General of the Federation, Alhaji Idris Ahmed, confirmed this in Abuja on Wednesday, saying N13.2bn was for salary shortfall and N10bn for promotion arrears.

According to Punch, The issue of promotion arrears has been of concern to many civil servants who have been promoted but were still being paid based on the salary grade before their promotion.

The issue had been blamed on inadequate budgetary provision for personnel cost. However, the Association of Senior Civil Servants of Nigeria in May issued a strike notice to the government over the issue.

Ahmed said the government’s decision was based on a clear understanding that clearing the arrears formed part of the palliative measures put in place to alleviate the effects of the harsh economic conditions on civil servants.

He added that the mandate to pay the affected workers was being released in batches, noting that the delay in releasing the funds was largely due to the verification of the claims of those to be paid.

He explained further that a new strategy had been devised to curb the rate of abuse of the process unlike in the past where funds were released to the various ministries, departments and agencies of government for onward disbursement to beneficiaries.

He said henceforth, the accounts of those that were promoted and being owed arrears would be credited directly after all the necessary verification.

He said, “We cannot give money in bulk to agencies. We will accept detailed information of all those individual employees of government who are in that category having names, banks and account numbers and the amount that happens to be in arrears as far as their salary payments are concerned.

“After due verification, we will now pay direct to the account of the employee. We have started that already and money has been set aside, N13.2bn for the salary shortfall and then N10bn monthly for promotion arrears.”