Trade Union Congress (TUC) has said that some state governors cannot pay salaries, despite bailout funds and Paris Club refund given to them because of a chain of political aides they are keeping.
President of TUC, Comrade Bobboi Kaigama, while speaking at the 2017 May Day celebration in Abuja, said organised Labour would soon mobilise its members against such practice.
He said, “Few weeks ago the federal government released the second tranche of Paris-London fund to governors to pay salaries and develop their states. Regrettably one is not sure whether what happened to the first will not happen to the second.
“The governors will tell the world they have created jobs when all they have done is to increase the number of aides and Special Assistants. This is not same as job creation. From investigations, we have discovered that the so-called aides are the conduit pipes through which the governors milk their states.
“Luckily for us, some of these who felt they were not well ‘settled’ have become whistle-blowers. We like to warn that soon the organised labour and its civil society allies will mobilise members nationwide against politicians who constitute nuisance and a clog in the wheel of progress of this country”.
On alleged illegal appointment of permanent secretaries, Comrade Kaigama said, “one of the most contentious issues that we have been battling with over the years is the illegal recruitment of permanent secretaries from outside the core Civil Service.
He added that, “This is now compounded at the Federal level by the illegal extension of the tenure of certain Permanent Secretaries and officers who are supposed to have retired from the Service in line with the Public Service Rules (PSR) and extant Circulars including the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
“We therefore call for the reversals of all appointments of permanent secretaries made outside of the core Civil Service while all illegal extension of tenure of any permanent secretaries should be revoked immediately”.
