The Federal Government on Wednesday blamed the delay in the payment of salaries of some of its workers on the leadership of some government’s agencies, who exhausted their annual salary allocation two months to the end of the year.
The Minister of Finance, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun, stated this in an interview with State House correspondents at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
She explained that the payroll system shut itself down automatically immediately the affected agencies reached their salary limit for the year.
Adeosun said the problem had been recurring every year and the government had approached the National Assembly to seek approval for virement to take care of the affected agencies.
The minister said with the receipt of the virement advice on Monday, the government would soon log it into the system so that the agencies could be paid.
She said, “All agencies have an allocational IPPIS which is the salary platform. If, for example, an agency’s salary for the year is N12bn, what we insist they should do is to continue to pay until that N12bn.
“So, instead of taking N1bn a month, the agencies are taking N1.2bn or N1.3bn. So, by the time it gets to October, many agencies had exhausted their allocation.
“What we did in the virement we sent to the National Assembly which has been approved was to list all the agencies that had problems with their salaries and applied to the National Assembly.
“We had to go back to the National Assembly to ask for an increase in the budgetary allocation of those agencies.
“We received that virement advice from the National Assembly on Monday this week. We are waiting to log it onto the system so that we can now pay those agencies.
“Basically, the system itself shut them down. That was the way the system was configured. It is a problem that used to happen every year and it is something we are trying to correct.”
The minister assured the workers that their salaries would be paid soon.
Source:punch
