Economic crunch: Abia won’t sack workers nor cut salaries –Ikpeazu

Economic crunch: Abia won’t sack workers nor cut salaries –Ikpeazu

 

From Okey Sampson, Aba

GOVERNOR Okezie Ikpeazu of Abia State has said his administration would not, due to the current economic crunch in the country, sack workers in the state nor cut the minimum wage. This is even as the President of the Ni­gerian Labour Congress (NLC), Ayuba Wab­ba, has vowed to declare a nationwide strike in January if any state governor announces the sack of workers in his state.

President of the NLC, who made this known, said state governors should rather cut down cost of governance, which he said was the major source of financial problems they are having instead of making workers the sac­rificial lamb.

Governor Ikpeazu, who stated this in the state capital, Umuahia, during his last quar­terly press briefing for 2015 said, “we are not contemplating down-sizing our workforce or reducing the minimum wage.”

He said, rather, everything would be put in place to make sure that workers in the state become more productive in terms of revenue collection and generation.

While assuring that workers in the state would receive their salaries promptly, he, however, said he was not going to use money borrowed for infrastructure development to pay workers’ salary which, he opined, would amount to misappropriation.

On roads reconstruction, Ikpeazu said de­spite the fact that what the state receives pres­ently from the federation account hovers with­in the region of N2.2billion and N2.4billion monthly, his administration was determined to build roads and provide other infrastructure of world class so that government would not go back to structures it had already done.

The governor said it was in this line that he introduced cement technology in the reconstruction of roads in the state and informed that 47 of such roads were on going in the state with nine already completed.

On security, the governor said his administration was poised to deal with kidnapping and other sundry crimes in the state and had purchased 25 vans which would be given to security agencies in the state.

He equally stated that government had purchased some motorbikes to be used by the newly formed state Traffic Management Agency, which he said, would deal with traffic offenders.

Ikpeazu said his government would broaden the revenue base of the state and assured that Abia would be one of the states in Nigeria that would sur­vive post oil era.

Source: http://sunnewsonline.com/new/economic-crunch-abia-wont-sack-workers-nor-cut-salaries-ikpeazu