March 2024 salaries of workers in some ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) in Cross River would not be paid if such MDAs continue to rebuff repeated directives to submit the nominal roll of their staff to relevant authorities, the State Head of Service, Dr Innocent Eteng, has said.
Dr Eteng, who made this known in Calabar, Monday, during a media chat, said due to over-bloated payroll, government had embarked on personnel audit to authenticate the overall workforce in the State, and that the personnel audit exercise yielded result with the discovery of workers with duplicate names.
According to him, the government had directed MDAs to submit their nominal roll so as to place it side by side with the payroll to ascertain the workforce, but lamented that only 9 MDAs had complied with the directive while others were adamant.
He further explained that the determination of the Governor Bassey Otu-led administration was to sensitize the civil service system by ascertaining the workforce so as to help government pay salaries and pensions on time and clear the backlog of gratuities.
“In Cross River has 56, 358 workers, including pensioners and traditional rulers. With our avowed desire to clean up the payroll, instructions were given to MDAs to submit nominal rolls of all their staff to the office of the Head of Service and office of the Accountant General. This is to ensure a one-to-one accurate reconciliation to enable only those who are in the State employ to be paid.
“Only few MDAs have complied. Those which have refused to submit their nominal roll will not be paid their March 2024 salaries.
“We operate a tripod arrangement involving the offices of the Head of Service, Auditor General and Accountant General for workers’ salaries to be paid, and this also includes promotion implementation. Promotions that do not follow due process would be rejected.
“Rumours are ripe that staff pay money to be promoted. Such staff and all those who received such gratification would be punished in line with civil service rules, including dismissal,” Dr Eteng submitted.
Also speaking, the Accountant General, Dr Glory Effiong, restated the resolve of government to run a transparent, people-friendly policy that would reposition the State for the sake of posterity, and therefore called on Cross Riverians to join hands with Gov Otu to deliver dividends of democracy to the teeming Cross River people.
