{"id":9213,"date":"2016-05-23T23:49:24","date_gmt":"2016-05-23T23:49:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/?p=9213"},"modified":"2016-05-24T07:41:54","modified_gmt":"2016-05-24T07:41:54","slug":"why-delta-that-local-govt-councils-cant-pay-workers-salaries-okowa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/?p=9213","title":{"rendered":"Why Delta Local Govt. Councils can’t pay workers salaries – Okowa"},"content":{"rendered":"

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DELTA State Governor, Senator Dr Ifeanyi Okowa has explained why local government council workers are owed about 10 m0nths salaries saying that the state has the largest numbers of workers and primary school teachers in the country with a wage bill of about N4.5 billion while the \"okowa\"<\/a>councils currently receive only about N2.5 billion monthly from the federation account<\/div>\n
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The Governor at a press conference in Asaba today(23\/05\/16) to kick-start activities to mark his one year in office blamed the current sorry state of the local government councils on the fall in oil prices despite the various financial support provided to the councils by the state government to assist in paying workers salary which in put to about 700 workers per local council councils.<\/div>\n
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He explained that when he came into office, the total number of workers was about 68,000, the largest in the council compared to Edo state for example which has a work force of only about 19,000. The governor said while he would not embark on massive sacking of workers, he was however determined to ensure that only genuine workers were paid as they were a lot of ghost workers on the payroll.<\/div>\n


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Dr. Okowa attributed the successes recorded so far by his administration in the delivery of democratic dividends despite the economic down-turn in the country to prudent management of resources. \u201cWhen I addressed the State immediately after my swearing-in as Governor on May 29, 2015, we were in the middle of a serious economic crisis, our monthly revenue both from the Federation Account and Internally Generated Revenue had dipped significantly; the non-oil sector of the economy remained largely untapped; the level of youth unemployment was troubling, posing a clear and present danger to the socio-political stability of the State; our credit was in bad shape, and the financial system was at best, shaky and at worst, perilous; indeed, our promise of prosperity for all Deltans seemed illusory, but, we moved swiftly and decisively to restructure our liabilities and instituted processes and procedures to plug leakages, eliminate wastes and ensure fiscal discipline.\u201d<\/div>\n
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\u201cThe fiscal consolidation measures we put in place have enabled us to achieve a great deal of macro-economic stability while creating the right conditions for us to implement programmes under the S.M.A.R.T agenda,\u201d Senator Okowa disclosed, asserting, \u201chad we not taken the steps we took, our financial system would have been on the verge of collapse by now; the global price of oil has continued to tumble, the naira has substantially weakened against the dollar, and recent security challenges in the Niger Delta region have combined to compound our national economic woes.\u201d<\/div>\n
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He stated that to diversify the economy of the state, his administration invested heavily in agriculture by \u201cstimulating and increasing the yield of our small-holder farmers through the Production and Processing Support Programme (PPSP), as the PPSP is aimed at up scaling the use of modern farm inputs and technologies of small-holder farmers to increase the yield of crop, livestock and fishery enterprises; towards this end, we distributed tractors to 64 Cooperative Societies and another set of 106 Cooperative Societies got Mellon Shellers while 18 other Cooperative Societies received Outboard Engines and Fishing Gears support packages.\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cWe also distributed improved variety of cassava cuttings, fertilizer, and cash to 475 cassava farmers; 100 fishery farmers were given fingerlings, feeds and cash; 100 poultry farmers were supported with 200-day-old chicks each, feeds and cash; 50 poultry layer farmers got 200 layers each, feeds and cash; 50 piggery farmers received 10 growers, feeds and cash; while 40 tomatoes farmers were supported with seedlings, agrochemicals and cash,\u201d Governor Okowa said, adding that in the area of education, his administration was working to ensure a paradigm shift from certificate acquisition of vocational and technical skills by the teeming youth population.<\/div>\n
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He stated, \u201cupon assumption of office, I sent the Delta State Vocational and Technical Education Board Bill to the State House of Assembly; the Bill, meant to provide the regulatory framework to administer and promote technical education in the State, was passed and signed into law in June 2015 and since then, we have reconstructed\/rehabilitated and equipped three technical colleges in Ofagbe, Sapele and Agbor. \u201c<\/div>\n
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While stating that the process to ensure curriculum review and enrichment to make the technical colleges more relevant to the dynamics of the 21st century marketplace, Governor Okowa said the inauguration of the Delta State Contributory Health Commission by his administration which made the state the first \u201cin the country to have a mandatory health insurance scheme for the purpose of universal healthcare coverage would ensure that \u201cpeople are able to access and get treatment at our hospitals\/clinics without suffering financial hardship at the point of service, or denied service outright due to lack of funds because, when the insurance scheme is fully operational, it will lead to a more robust healthcare system, improved quality and more affordable healthcare delivery as well as significantly better health outcomes.\u201d<\/div>\n

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DELTA State Governor, Senator Dr Ifeanyi Okowa has explained why local government council workers are owed about 10 m0nths salaries saying that the state has the largest numbers of workers and primary school teachers in the country with a wage bill of about N4.5 billion while the councils currently receive only about N2.5 billion monthly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9214,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[205,430],"class_list":["post-9213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-state","tag-delta-state","tag-dr-ifeanyi-okowa"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/okowa.jpg","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4oswh-2oB","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9213","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9213"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9213\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9224,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9213\/revisions\/9224"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}