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Governor Francis Nwifuru said his administration would pay the 70,000 Naira new minimum wage to Ebonyi State civil servants.
Nwifuru, who made this known at the weekend during the Grand Finale for the 2024 New Yam (Ojiji) festival for the Izhi Nnodo clan in Anmegu, Abakaliki local government area of Ebonyi State, assured that his administration would obey the supreme court ruling on the granting financial autonomy to the local government area.
He recalled that according to the National Assembly Act, the new minimum wage is 70,000 Naira to a grade level one civil servant, saying his administration would pay it when the workforce and Head of Service in the state agreed on the payment formula.
"I know there's a difference between minimum wage and salary increment. I said the Act of the National Assembly made the minimum wage of 70,000 Naira to pay to the grade level one civil servant and it's binding on everybody.
"I said Ebonyi civil servants will be paid 70,000 minimum wages, as from the day the Head of Service and civil servants agree on the formula they present to me, we will pay.
"As regards the grade level, the minimum wage is not a salary increment; it's not as if 70,000 Naira is going to be topped on everybody's salary - it's not possible; that's not what minimum wage is all about.
"Minimum wage means what each person gets as he's working; that's what I define as a minimum wage, but if the act says the contrary, the position of the act will take effect.
"It's not as if I am trying to make amendments to the act, but it's stipulated 70,000 Naira as a minimum wage, and we are going to pay the 70,000 minimum wage."
He continued: "As regards the local government autonomy, I said that the Supreme Court has ruled that the local government should have financial autonomy. I said Ebonyi will obey the Supreme Court ruling on the local government having financial autonomy.
"It is because, as it stands today, I can't remember the day I touched the local government fund, I have never done that, and there is nothing different as far as I am concerned. We have been conducting elections after the inauguration of the local government Chairman-elect tomorrow; if the ruling of the Supreme Court said the existence of the joint account should be removed, who am I to challenge the decision of the Supreme Court?
" We are going to implement the ruling of the Supreme Court by allowing each local government to take its money and execute projects, it feels like executing. But the local governments should also remember that the constitution, which gave everybody to be wherever we are today, also gave the State Assembly to make laws for the operation of the local government, and that the State Assembly made the law that created the Development Centres.
"Those Development Centres are still functional, and even the Supreme Court has not said the Development Centres should not be in existence; as far as I am concerned, the resources of the local government area are jointly owned by the local government and the development centres according to the sharing formula created by the law of the State Assembly."
He added: "Again, I said a lot of the contractors are not executing their contracts according to the instructions, I gave them. I said earlier that even before giving out the contracts, you have the liberty to relinquish the contract if any party feels that something is going the contrary, that the agreements are not obeyed.
"In doing that, I just sounded a kind of warning to the contractors that it's high time we do things properly. If you hold government money and refuse to do the job, it's never acceptable. Whatever any contractor is doing according to our concrete agreement; definitely, we will obey it, but if you try to go contrary to the concrete agreement, we will never obey that but take action against you. We will even prosecute the contractor.
"We are ready for anybody who thinks that he will collect government funds for any contract and not execute the job."
"I also said that our culture - tradition and customs should be what everybody should practice. We have to obey them 24 hours because once you don't have tradition, you will not know anything about your way of life.
"Culture is the people's way of life. How do we exist when we don't have something we respect in our lifetime? It means your existence is in doubt. This culture is what made us who we are today. We should respect our culture because our people preserve it, and by looking at it, it encourages peace, unity and progress.
"I believe if we begin to understand our traditions and customs, things will change for the better, even the way we live, behave, working because many of our youths are lazy; they don't want to work because some of them if you give them work they can't work."
