From Wole Balogun, Ado-Ekiti
Ekiti State Government may stop the central payment of state and local government workers’ salaries, saying local governments will be encouraged to pay their staff.
Governor Ayodele Fayose made the disclosure at the weekend during a meeting with directors of finance and accounts, directors of administration and chief internal auditors from across ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs).
In a statement by his Chief Press Secretary, Mr. Idowu Adelusi, the governor also warned public servants against signing documents without thoroughly going through them.
According to him, any negative fall-out from any signed document would be borne by the officer who endorsed it.
The meeting was conveyed to find solutions to problems associated with generating wholesome nominal and pay rolls by MDAs.
The state government, he said, was unimpressed with the sharp practices by some officers in charge of generating the nominal and pay rolls.
He frowned at a situation where people that had left the service or were dead still had their names on the nominal rolls.
The governor, after listening to complaints by internal auditors that they did not have computers to verify soft copies of pay rolls sent to them from the accountant general office, directed that all officers should, by next week, be sent on computer training and afterwards provided with personal computers.
The governor also warned civil servants against playing politics, saying anybody interested in politics should resign.
Earlier, Deputy Governor, Dr. Kolapo Olusola, said in the course of staff verification exercise conducted last year, a lot of anomalies were discovered.
He listed the sharp practices to include over-payment, under-payment, paying dead or retired officers, over-deductions, and illegal promotions.
In his remarks, Head of Service, Dr. Gbenga Faseluka, said there was no need for rivalry among officers in various cadres in the service.
He said the state was building a single service and urged officers to complement one another and not engage in any unnecessary rivalry.
… Gov woos traditional chiefs, paramount rulers on 2017 budget
From Wole Balogun, Ado Ekiti
Ekiti State Governor, Ayodele Fayose has wooed grassroots leaders and traditional chiefs, seeking their contributions in the preparation of the 2017 budget.
He also assured that any project his administration would include in the 2017 appropriation bill would be by request of each of the towns in the state.
Fayose gave the assurance in Ado Ekiti at the weekend when he presented staff of office to the new Alasin of Asin Ekiti, Oba Olufemi Babalola, in Ikole local Government Area.
In a related development, during a meeting with traditional chiefs across the state, Fayose said he would interface with the leaders of every community to aggregate projects that would be injected into the proposed fiscal bill.
The governor said he recognised the need for his government to work with the traditional rulers and chiefs to give valuable information on activities of those that were plundering the state’s resources such as economic trees, farmlands and others, to shore up the internally generated revenue.
Fayose said he would visit the 133 towns in the state to aggregate their opinions in compiling the financial bill, so that his projects could meet the yearnings of the people.
The governor said the step became important to prevent siting of projects that were against the priorities of the citizens.
“I solicit your support for this administration to succeed. This is not about party politics and Ekiti should be our primary concern. I will continue to call you for this kind of meeting every three months to give accounts of governance.
“I don’t want to impose projects on our communities. I want them to be by request because what is the essence of having a project the people will not value? Whatever we are going to do must meet their immediate demands to assuage their feelings and sufferings.
“We want to involve stakeholders in the preparation of the budget, a bottom up approach, we want to maintain the lead of being ranked first as performing best in budget implementation as we did last year.”
The forum also gave room for the government to present achievements of the Fayose’s administration to the chiefs and also presented a rundown of the federal allocation that came to the state’s treasury since last year, with an indication that the state was having developmental challenges due to the continuous reduction in allocation from the Federal Government.