Ondo pledges to pay workers salary arrears this week

ONDO State government yesterday indicated its readiness to pay its workers their salary arrears this week, dismissing insinuations that it has received bail-out fund from the Federal Government.

The state Commissioner for Finance, Yele Ogundipe, who disclosed this while speaking with journalists in Akure, the state capital, said the government was yet to access the fund though process is ongoing by the state to access the fund, noting that the Federal Government had earlier directed that states can only access the fund through commercial banks, but the state got an offer letter from a commercial bank on the 3rd of this month.

“We are currently processing the payment and what the Federal Government has done is to instruct the state to access the funds through the commercial banks. We have approached one of the commercial banks as most other states had done and they just gave us an offer letter on Thursday, September 3, 2015.”

He said further that government is hopeful that “within the next one week, the N14 billion will be received, disclosing that government is still collating all its papers to be forwarded to the Central Bank.

The commissioner, however, said that workers in the state would be paid a month’s salary before the end of this week while the remaining two months arrears would be paid as soon as the bail-out fund is accessed.

Dismissing insinuations from some quarters that the bail-out fund would be used to fund some projects, including road and other infrastructures, the commissioner said the fund could not be used for any purpose other than payment of salaries, adding that the condition for accessing the loan does not even allow for pensioners to benefit from the package.