The
Accountant-General of the Federation (AGF), Mr Ahmed Idris, says the
Federal Government plans to begins payment of staff salaries by the 25th
of every month, as directed by President Muhammadu Buhari.
Idris, who disclosed this in an
interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja on Wednesday,
said “this is going to be given a test, I believe, by this month’’.
The AGF also said that the government
was working on a new arrangement, which, if approved, would ensure
payment of the salaries before the monthly meeting of the Federal
Accounts Allocation Committee (FAAC).
According to him, usually, salaries are
paid after the FAAC meeting, where revenue accruing to the federation’s
account are shared between the federal, state and local governments.
“There is a standing instruction of Mr
President to pay salary on or before 24 or 25 of every month and we will
try as much as possible to comply and to abide by that.
“We are taking a step further to make a provision whereby we can accommodate salary payments even before FAAC.
“This is going to be given a test I believe by this month.
“We will go to seek for necessary
approval of our political masters to make sure that at least salary and
other statutory payments are made even before FAAC.
“Because we can project how much they
are and therefore we can prepare and hit the ground running to make them
realisable and actualised.
“Even where we delay FAAC, we can still pay salary.’’
Idris dispelled the widely held belief
that the Treasury Single Account (TSA) policy is responsible for the
delay in the payment of salaries and attributed the situation to the
crash in global oil prices, which has affected the inflow of income to
the country
Credit: Leadership
Post a Comment