“We Can’t Pay Your Full Salaries Due To Recession” – Niger Government Tells Civil Servants

Niger State Government has announced that it would slash the salaries of civil servants due to a reduction in its federal allocation because of the recession.

The secretary to the state government, Ahmed Ibrahim Matane, explained it was not so much about the slash, but inability of the government to pay 100 percent salary to workers.

He said because of recession, the federal allocation has dropped to a level where the state government can only pay workers 70 percent of their salaries, a decision which organized labour rejected.

“What we discussed with the organized Labor was that because of the recession, our FAAC allocation has dropped to a level where we would not be able to pay 100 percent of the salary.

“We called their attention to this, we opened our books in terms of how much we received, the existing commitments and what is left over,” he said.

Matane further noted that there will be a meeting with Labour leaders on Thursday, November 26, 2020, to discuss the next decisions to take.

KanyiDaily recalls that the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) had last week announced that Nigeria has officially slid into its worst economic recession in over three decades.

According to gross domestic product numbers released by the NBS, the nation recorded a contraction of 3.62 percent in the third quarter of 2020.

However, the Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Mrs Zainab Ahmed, maintained that Nigeria will soon exit the current recession which was caused by the COVID-19 outbreak.