Anambra Civil Service Day and harmonization of Pension Payment by Polycarp Onwubiko

Civil Service Day cerebration in Anambra state was held on the last Wednesday of July amidst mixed feelings. A cursory observation of the countenance of average workers revealed anything but cheerfulness and optimistic look for a better tomorrow. The occasion which could be perceived as yearly stock-taking and acknowledgement of the pivotal role of public service as a veritable engine room of governance and over-all development is also used to reassure and ginger the entire workforce to up the ante of their dedication as Merit Awards are showered to selected staff whom their respective offices have adjudged and certified to have excelled on certain aspects of their duties and service. Civil Service Day predispose the workers to be naturally expectant that the Governor would come up with enthralling and mouth-watering promises and offer explanations on certain policy directions of government through questions and answers emanating from the remarks of the Head of Service and Governor’s address.  Academic papers are delivered by acclaimed resource persons outside the public service like the institutions of higher learning and multi-national corporations ostensibly to broaden the horizon of the public servants and even public office holders.
Governor Willy Obiano was highly elated by the cheering of the workers for at least having lived up to his solemn promises  viz: marginal increase in salaries and allowances[even as he promised to increase same based on the envisaged quantum leap in the internally generated revenue], buses that convey workers, bags of rice similar to what is jokingly referred by the boisterous Governor Fayoseof Ekiti state as ‘stomach infrastructure’, vehicles for the Directors, in addition to housing programme for the workers. If Governor Obiano could be appreciating constructive criticisms as an experienced high profile operative in the organized private sector and elite, he should drop the patently irrational and wasteful policy of the former Governor, Chief Peter Obi in expending over 4 MillionNaira on one Director for a brand new car. He should emulate the Governor of one of the states in the western part of the country who rationally reinvented car loan policy and gave between seven to nine hundred thousand naira to senior public servants from GL 14-16 to purchase fairly used vehicles [‘Tokumbo’] which is much stronger and serviceable than those fragile and toy-like Japanese brand new cars. The rational thing would have been to expend such humongous amount of money [4 million Naira]to about six senior officers to buy Tokumbo vehicles of their choice. Permanent Secretaries can be given about two million Naira to purchase very nice cars or even Jeep which is not too much for them due to bad roads in the country.  The aphorism of the ‘greatest good for the greatest number will enable many senior civil servants to own cars of their choice. Many Directors never liked those fragile looking Japanese brand new cars being bought by the state government, notwithstanding the alleged ‘deals’ in the bulk purchase. The promise of procuring 50 brand new Japanese cars for the newly promoted Directors is a blatant waste of scarce public fund. The huge amount could be given to public servants on GL 14 and above as car advance and to refund N500,000 as official policy.It is disgusting to see retired senior officers not having car, quiet unlike the days of yore when GL 07 officers were given car loans. Governor Obiano has done well in deviating from some inhuman practices of his predecessor who paid salaries and pensions at the second week of the next month instead of the end of the month.  It was believed that the   delay in the payment of salaries and pensions was due to the alleged fixing of the monthly statutory allocations in the bank. Prompt payment of salaries and pensions at the end of the month has really portrayed  Governor Willy Obiano as a godly fellow since wage earners could plan how to pay their debts and manage their peanut. It is  lamentable that public servants are paid very poorly in a country where federal legislators earn several millions of naira every month; and that is why the organized labour leaders have initiated a signal to President Muhammadu Buhari for a review of the current   minimum wage to align with the current realities of prices of goods and services.
Governor Obiano should extend his god-fearing disposition to the pensioners by hearkening to their age long passionate appeal to harmonize their earnings in line with the law governing minimum wage. He should not emulate his predecessor who tactically dodged to up-date pensioners earnings as he cunningly directed that a verification exercise be carried out to detect ghost pensioners. Having done that by the Head of Service and presented to him for implementation, he dumped it and brazenly ordered for another round of verification exercise which he again set aside and left office. To the consternation of the ‘senior citizens’, Governor Obiano  failed to honour the passionate cry of the pensioners to implement the harmonization already completed but ordered for another round of verification exercise from October 2014 to be completed in March 2015. This is now August and he has not deemed it fit to implement the harmonization to assuage the yearning of the pensioners who are in several levels of privation and exasperation. The delay is simply a   delay tactics. Since the Association of  Pensioners Union is affiliated to the Apex labour organization NLC, it was expected that the Labour leadership should be pressurizing the Governor to harmonize the yawning gap in the earnings of the pensioners. It sad that during May Day Celebration, labour union speeches are replete with encomium on the achievements of the government while paying less emphasis on the needs of the workers and pensioners.
For the past eight years, Anambra people have naively courted the ugly habit of praising their governors to high heavens with sycophancy like Imo and Abia state people without offering constructive criticisms to moderate the actions of their political leaders so that they would come to terms with the basic needs of the people and be conscious of good governance. This mean disposition sustained the quixotic development model of “developing all sectors simultaneously” by the immediate past administration which at the end of its tenure did not register any appreciable impact in any sector. For instance, there is no pipe-born water in Awka and no good road net-work to ease traffic miasma.
 The gap between pensioners is exasperating indeed.  For instance, GL 15 officers who retired in April 2011 are receiving N59,000 while those on the same GL 15 who retired in May 2011 when the extant minimum wage was signed into law, earn over N80,000. Again, there are permanent secretaries who earn N30,000 while others earn over N120,000. One is therefore wondering whether the Governor is expecting these aged people to carry placards to the Governor’s Lodge to kowtow before him or in extreme exasperation invoke curses on him like the erstwhile Governor who was alleged to have referred to pensioners as “dead woods”. I believe that Governor Obiano will no longer hesitate to give the pensioners their due to enable them have their lives become meaningful. Past Governors who ignored pensioners cries have lived to regret their lives after leaving office.
        


Mr. Onwubiko is an author and public affairs analyst, [email protected], Awka Anambra State