… Expresses Concern Over Non-Utilization Of Funds On Housing for Civil Servants
From Kenechukwu Obiajuru, Yenagoa
Bayelsa State Government has expressed worry over the non-utilization of the monthly contributory funds for housing projects in the state, threatening to pull out its civil servants from the National Housing Scheme if drastic measures are not taken to make the scheme beneficial to its enrollees.
The Deputy Governor, Senator Lawrence Ewhrudjakpo, stated this when he granted audience to the State Chairman and other executive members of the Association of Senior Civil Servants of Nigeria (ASCSN), at his office in Government House, Yenagoa.
Senator Ewhrudjakpo, in a statement by his Senior Special Assistant on Media, Mr Doubara Atasi, at the weekend, decried the situation whereby housing deductions were being made monthly from the salary of civil servants in Bayelsa, with no single housing project on ground to justify such deductions.
Consequently, the Deputy Governor, who described the situation as worrisome, said the state government was weighing the option of withdrawing its employees from the National Housing Scheme, if operators of the scheme failed to make it effective and efficient in no distant time.
According to him, it does not make any economic sense to have billions piled up in the Scheme, whereas nothing was being done to build the houses meant for the civil servants in the first place.
The Deputy Governor while calling on the ASCSN and other relevant labour unions to initiate action on the matter, equally directed the Commissioner for Labour, Employment and Productivity, Mr. Saturday Odoko, to interface with the relevant federal agencies and operators of the housing scheme to ascertain the true position of the deducted housing funds from civil servants in Bayelsa State, which is believed to run into billions of naira.
His words: “As a government, we are concerned and worried by some of the issues you have raised here, especially the issue of our civil servants not benefiting from the National Housing Scheme they subscribed to.
“We are aware that monthly deductions are being made from the salaries the state government pays to our civil servants to the contributory fund, and that they are not getting the benefits the way they should as spelt out in the scheme, is not acceptable.
“And so, going forward, we will not hesitate to pull out our civil servants from the National Housing Scheme, if its operators failed to reposition the scheme to make it beneficial to enrollees from Bayelsa.”
In a response to other issues raised by the ASCSN team, the Bayelsa Number Two Citizen, called on the various labour unions in the State to look beyond their monthly rebates and check-off dues, and start making profit-yielding investments to strengthen their financial base.
On the appeal for support towards the on-going ASCSN Secretariat project, Senator Ewhrudjakpo gave an assurance that government would support the Association within available resources.
Earlier, the state ASCSN Chairman, Comrade Laye Julius, called on the state government to look into what was happening to funds deducted from civil servants in the National Housing Scheme.
Comrade Julius, who is also State Chairman of the TUC in Bayelsa, lamented that workers in the state had been contributing to the housing scheme since 2007, yet no single house had ever been built in Bayelsa.
While extending an invitation to the Deputy Governor to deliver a lecture at ASCSN seminar next month, he equally appealed to the State government to assist the Association to complete its state Secretariat project situated along Bayelsa Palm road.
