The chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Rivers State chapter, Bro Felix Obuah says the State Governor, Chief Barr. Nyesom Wike deserves a pat on the back for keeping to his election promises to place the State above self in his administration.
Governor Nyesom Wike also saved the judiciary and State Assembly workers from insolvency as he opened the Judiciary Complex and State House Of Assembly Complex which were under lock and key for over one year.
Reeling out the achievements of the administration, the State Commissioner for Information and Communication, Dr. Austin Tam-George said development to Governor Wike is not incidental, but an ideological commitment to meet the needs of people.
Tam -George said: “As a matter of that, over the past one year, Governor Wike has constructed over 150 kilometres of roads scattered across the State, nobody in this political administration has been able to achieve this feat. So, in terms of development, Governor Wike is ahead of every public officer in this political dispensation.
“He is not constructing the roads simply because they are very bad, he is using the position of critical infrastructure as a way of re-industrializing the state itself. So, as you have these roads to travel on it you are able to conduct business through it as well. The other aspect of development is empowerment, for instance, the Governor took a loan of N2 billion from the Central Bank to support small and medium scale enterprises. As I speak, 35, 000 SME’s business owners in the state have been empowered. Also 200 youths are going to Israel for skill acquisition programmes. The intention is to break the independency syndrome where government is expected to employ all unemployed people. Some of them are going to learn skills like pipe fitting, industrial welding, ICT, etc”.
The Commissioner noted that the mentioned projects have been funded by monies from the Internally- generated revenue which has risen from N4 billion to N9 billion.
He said that despite the dwindling revenue from the Federal allocation which has degenerated from N25 billion to now N3.6 billion, the State government was able to clear all the inherited backlog of salaries and pensions and paid workers up to date except those who have not submitted themselves to the advanced biometric exercise.
“We inherited huge backlog of salaries, three months of salaries were not paid to workers. Seven months for pensioners, eight months for teachers’ salaries were not paid by Amaechi’s administration, but as soon as Wike administration came on board, he cleared those backlog. The most important part is that since then, not a single penny has been owed to workers. Those who have not received salaries are those who have not submitted themselves to an advanced Biometric exercise.”
He commended the governor for the introduction of BVN saying over N1 billion has been saved from the exercise.
“We want to do more, but we are limited by paucity of funds. The allocation since this government came into office has not risen beyond N5 billion. Three months ago, the allocation was N3.6 billion, the wage bill for the State Civil Service is N5.3 billion. The bill for pensioners is over N1 billion. So monthly wage bill of salaries and pensions is close to N7 billion and when you have something like N3.6 billion, you are already on the flat ground but the government is not complaining, he continues to find ways to cover up the leakages to manage the resources so that with little resources, you can achieve a lot.”
On the security situation in the State, the Commissioner blamed the killings on fight among rival cult groups, stressing that Governor Wike gave maximum support to the police and the Joint security task force in his first 100 days in office to enable them fight crime in the state.
culled from guardian.ng
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