The National Union of Local Government Employees (NULGE), Bayelsa State yesterday appealed to Governor Seriake Dickson not to reconstitute the dissolved caretaker committees for council administrations.
Speaking in Yenagoa, the state Chairman NULGE, Mr. Akpos Ekiegha, said the cost of maintaining the caretaker chairmen and the system was one of the reasons why council workers were owed arrears of salaries.
Ekiegha asked Dickson to allow Heads of the councils to function as acting chairmen for at least eight months to enable them offset the arrears owed workers in their various councils.
He said: “If the Heads of LGAs are allowed to run the system as Acting Chairmen, believe you me, there will be nothing like salary arrears.”
He cited Cross River and Delta states as examples of state running the same system.
“If civil servants are allowed to man the system, they know their boundaries, they cannot ask for a security vote of N20m but the caretaker chairman will ask for a security vote of between N20m and N40m.
“They (caretaker chairmen) would say there is security problem in so, so community.
“Therefore, they will say they need N100m to go and solve the problem, but we, as civil servants, have a limit.
“Our main focus is to pay our workers’ salaries and if any money is left, it will be intact.”
Ekeigha said backlog of salaries had reduced to only four- and- a half months within the short period the caretaker committees were dissolved with some improvement in federal allocations.
He further urged Dickson to fulfill his promise of taking over payment of primary school staff salaries from local government to enable teachers receive their wages regularly.
He said nonpayment of the primary school staff by the state government was part of the reasons the council workers were currently on strike.
Ekiegha also debunked speculation that the state government was interfering with local government funds.