Governor Samuel Ortom had an interview with the Journalists’ hangout crew today were they had a conversation about the condition of Benue state and the presidential election. In the course of the interview, one of the anchors of the program asked Governor Samuel Ortom to react to the allegations making the rounds on social media that he doesn’t pay salaries. In reaction to that question, Governor Ortom said that is not true and such statements or allegations are made by his opponents. Read more on what Governor Ortom said below.
“I think this is a fallacy from my opponents who say Ortom don’t pay salaries, if I have not been paying salaries at least you would have seen the reactions from the workers themselves. When I came in in 2015 I inherited over N70 billion arrears in salaries, pension and gratuity, but today we have less than N40 billion outstanding to pay at the state level and N25 billion at the local government level”.
The anchor of the program asked Samuel Ortom if it is true that he has a problem of over bloated civil service, Samuel Ortom replied that question by saying, “Benue state is a state that the economy is driven by peasant farmers and actively populated by the civil service, so if you don’t pay salaries there will be problem. We don’t have industries like other states do, the industry we have are the civil servants so we just have to do employment. Many people may not be aware of this, Benue state is paying the highest salary in the north and in Nigeria Benue state is paying the highest salary after Lagos and Rivers State”.
Content created and supplied by: AdeAdek (via Opera
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