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(Lokoja)
All things being equal, public officers drawing their salary from the Kogi State Government should go home with 80 per cent of their April salary.
This follows the end of the marathon meeting between the Organised Labour and the Kogi State government during which the two parties settled for the percentsge, Duaglobalnews gathered.
The online publication recalls that the organised labour had stuck to its gun, insisting that nothing short of full salary for workers would be acceptable during the previous meetings that ended without agreement on Monday in Lokoja
The meeting was sequelled to the plan,earlier, by the state government pay 50 percent salary to its workers.
Shortly after the news filtered into the public ear,the workers took to the media by rejecting the offer by their employer.
This development made the government to shift ground, pleading to pay seventy five percent as at Monday, 4 April.
At the meeting held at the Government House, Lokoja, the organized labour led by Comrade Onu Edoka insisted that there was no justification for payment of percentage to the Kogi Workers.
The Government on its side said it opted for percentage salary because of its inability to draw overdraft to pay salary, a practice the social gathered had been on over a period.
Reliable ources said the indebtedness of the state government ran into N4.8 billion, a development the source added, led to the bank swallowing the March 2020 Statutory allocation paid to the state in April.
The online publication further learnt that, owing to the Covid-19 pandemic, the Central Bank of Nigeria,(CBN) new guidelines do not permit the granting of huge overdraft.
As a result,it becomes difficult for the Bank to give same gesture to the state governments as enjoyed in the past.
It is, however, not clear if the percentage salary payment include the retirees some of who take home about N500,000, in the case of those who retired as permanent secretary or the equivalent and others as low as N20,000 as monthly pension.
The variation depends on the year of retirement and grade among other factors.
