From Joe Effiong, Uyo,
Akwa Ibom State Government has debunked claims by Senior Special Assistant to President Muhammadu Buhari on National Assembly Matters (Senate), Senator Ita Enang, that civil servants in the state were being owed salaries despite the fact that the state gets the highest allocation from the federation account.
Commissioner for information, Mr Aniekan Umanah who refuted Enang’s assertion described it as “as wild, unfounded and baseless considering the fact that workers in the state have been paid up to date.”
He explained that the present harsh economic realities have no boundary, pointing out that it was a fallout of the global economic meltdown occasioned by the collapse of the oil prices at the international market.
Umanah added that “if there is any issue concerning non-payment of wage due to any worker, that would be sorted out very soon because government is trying to resolve the nagging problem of ghost workers in the system and every worker was asked to comply with the Biometric Data Capturing (BDC) process, but some workers are yet to comply with that directive, so nobody should be blamed for that.”
Last week, Senator Enang tasked Gov. Udom Emmanuel to declare the debt profile of the state and stop paying workers’ salaries piecemeal. He said this to newsmen in his country home in Uyo and later, on live radio programme in the state.