Olalekan Adetayo, Abuja
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.
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