Why we owe workers salaries — FG

The Federal Government yesterday said staff of some agencies are yet to get November salaries because they had exhausted their budgetary allocations since October.

The Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun told State House reporters after the Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting that the affected agencies had more staff than the budgetary allocation.

She said: “Let me explain how the salary system works. All the agencies have an allocated IPPIS which is the salary platform. If for example an agency has a N12bn salary for the year, we insist they continue to pay until that N12bn is exhausted.

“Instead of taking N1bn a month, such agencies were taking N1.2bn or N1.3bn. So, by the time it got to October, many agencies had exhausted their allocations. What we did in the virement we sent to the National Assembly, which the National Assembly approved, was that we listed all the agencies that had problems with their salaries and applied to 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 is the way the system has been configured, it’s a problem that used to happen every year and it’s something we are trying to correct.”