Governor Oluwarotimi Akeredolu (SAN) has appealed to workers in Ondo State to forfeit their outstanding salary arrears owed by the immediate past administration, as sacrifice for the development of the state.
“If workers meet and say they waived two months, we will be glad, but if they insist on having the full arrears, we will look for ways of paying. The government would continue to try and make sure we don’t owe them salaries,” he said.
Akeredolu stated this at the weekend while receiving the committee report to offset outstanding salary debts. He said the last administration owed workers about N80 billion during its two terms in office.
The committee was inaugurated in March to deliberate on how to offset the six months salary arrears owed by the last administration. Akeredolu reiterated the importance of prompt payment of workers’ salaries, but stressed that the Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) must be increased to tackle the arrears.
“Before we present our budget and after presentation, I have to address the workers to let them know that it is not possible to use all our money to pay salaries. We have said this many times, we must be prepared to make sacrifices because we don’t borrow money to pay salaries, something must be done.
“I thank the people for their efforts and resilience. I know it’s not easy, but it’s also getting increasingly difficult for the government too. But whatever we do, we would try not to owe salaries,” he said. Akeredolu further expressed hope that the workers would waive the outstanding salary arrears as part of their contributions to the development of the state.
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