Kwara State Governor AbdulRaman AbdulRazaq yesterday met heads of the state colleges of education as well as the College of Arabic and Islamic Legal Studies over the ongoing strike by workers of the institutions.
Employees of the three colleges of education in Ilorin, Lafiagi and Oro had in the last three weeks embarked on industrial action over non-implementation of 2011 agreement reached with the workers.
AbdulRazaq said the state was not immune to the steady decline of revenue, adding, however, that the administration would continue to make payment of full salaries a first line charge because of its wider implications for workers’ welfare and the local economy.
He said states were getting abysmally low revenue receipts to the extent that allocations from Abuja to Kwara were hardly enough to pay full salaries and run basic government expenses until the allocation was augmented with Internally Generated Revenue (IGR), which ought to be for infrastructural development and savings for the future.
Said he: “Our policy is to make sure that we pay 100 per cent salary and this is exactly what we have been doing since day one. All of our allocations and part of IGR now go into paying salary and running basic government expenses. We hardly have leftovers. So, we are struggling because the money is just not there. On top of that, we are giving money to the local governments to pay 100 per cent salary. After this is done, nothing is left.
“We are aware of your requests and we truly want to do them. However, we are currently constrained by resources. Allocation has gone down. We have to augment payment of salary and cost of governance from what is spendable of our IGR. Our ongoing capital projects are funded with bond. And it is simply impossible to use bond money to do any other thing because the terms of accessing the bond prevent such things. The bond we took is such that you cannot take a kobo out of it to do anything not listed in the terms. I urge everyone to bear with us. For now, we are only able to pay salaries 100 per cent and this is in fact a struggle. However, paying salary as and when due is a thing we take very seriously.”