Payroll Review to Remove Ghost Workers, Illegal Allowances, Says Ngige

Minister of Labour and Employment, Senator Chris Ngige, yesterday shed more light on moves by the federal government to review payrolls and cut the cost of governance, allaying fears that the federal government would prune workers' salaries as part of the cost-saving measures.

Rather, Ngige said at the opening of a meeting of the Presidential Committee on Salaries and Hazard allowance for the Health Sector, in Abuja that the federal government would only remove ghost workers from the payroll and also check illegal allowances that are outside the approved template, as part of its costsaving measures.

The organised labour had kicked against what it described as moves by the federal government to slash workers' salaries as a way of reducing the cost of governance.

The organised labour was reacting to last week’s statement by the Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed, at the National Policy Dialogue on Corruption and Cost of Governance in Nigeria, organised by the Independent Corrupt Practice Commission (ICPC), in Abuja, that President Muhammadu Buhari had directed the National Salaries, Incomes & Wages Commission (NSIWC) to review the salaries of civil servants as well as the number of federal agencies.

Besides, the federal government also intends to remove some superfluous items from the budget in order to cut the cost of governance.

But Ngige, who dismissed reports of an imminent slash of workers’ salaries, said at no time did the government propose any pay-cut measure.

The minister added that what the federal government was planning to do was to fish out fictitious workers and those earning unapproved allowances.

The minister said the government was also reviewing enterprises to know those productive and those that should be scrapped.

According to him, rather than slashing the salaries of workers, the federal government will encourage productivity in the public service.

He said: "I want to use this medium to dispel the erroneous report ascribed to the Minister of Finance and Budget Planning who is also chairman of the Presidential Committee on Salaries that the federal is planning to slash salaries of its workers.

"I am the deputy chairman in that committee and there was never a time government said it was going to slash salaries of the public servant. We never said so.

“If anything, we are holding meetings like this to increase hazard allowance for those who are deserving, for those who are working and experiencing hazards in their place of work, those who are exposed to disease infections which may even cause their death. So, we did not in the Presidential Committee on Salaries say that we are going to slash salaries."

The minister stated that the federal government was taking steps to carry out a personnel audit and an appraisal of their allowances to identify real workers and fictitious ones.

He said the plan was not to cut salaries. "Rather, what we are trying to do is to make sure that we know the actual quantum of persons who are labelled civil servants; that they exist. We want to have the actual figures.

"We don't want to have ghost workers as they used to call them or fictitious workers.

“Secondly, there are establishments or organisations where people have fixed their own allowances that did not pass through the normal channels - which did not go to the government's salary fixing agency, the Salaries, Incomes and Wages Commission.