Alhaji Bature Shinkafi, the Sokoto State Head of Service, said on Friday in Sokoto that some workers may not receive their April salary because of failure to submit their Bank Verification Numbers.
Shinkafi said that the affected workers, were staff of 23 Ministries Departments and Agencies (MDAs) which failed to meet the April 11 deadline for the submission of BVNs.
” The state government had early this month, April, directed all the MDAs to submit the BVN numbers of all their workers, latest by April 11.
” As at the close of the deadline on April 11, only 73 MDAs were able to meet the deadline, while 23 others failed to do so.
” The state government had also directed that any MDA that failed to meet the deadline will not get the April salaries of its workers.
” The affected workers will only get their April salaries after facing a special verification committee of reputable people.
” The committee, which will soon be set up, will receive the details of the service records of the affected workers, after which they will be paid their salaries,” he said.
The HOS said that the exercise was not intended to cause the workers any hardship or witch-hunt anyone, but to ascertain the actual staff strength and wage bill of the state government.
According to him, the staff strength of the state government now stood at about 26,000, with an average monthly wage bill of over N1.6 billion.
” The exercise is aimed at sanitising the state civil service, as well as blocking all areas of leakages of the state government’s incomes which are becoming leaner by the day.
” The state government wants to avoid a situation where the lion share of its ever-declining incomes goes to the payment of salaries.
” This obnoxious situation will certainly incapacitate the state government from executing the badly-needed projects, programmes and policies,” Shinkafi said.
He also unfolded plans by the state government to conduct the second phase of the verification exercise after the biometric details of all its workers would have been captured. (NAN)