Civil servants in Benue State have been given a reprieve when the Governor, Rev. Fr. Hyacinth Alia, fulfilled his pledge to start paying salaries on June 25, 2023.
Workers in Benue State last received pay in November 2022, and they were also owed five months of arrears in 2017 that the then-governor, Samuel Ortom, pledged to pay but did not.
The backlog of salary arrears was one of the issues that contributed to Ortom’s Peoples Democratic Party’s defeat in the recent general elections.
Alia vowed in his Democracy Day program that wage payments would begin on June 25.
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A cross-section of workers who spoke to our correspondent on Monday expressed their delight and praised the governor for following through on his words.
A staff member in the Ministry of Works, Tony Msugh, said, “I thank the governor for fulfilling his promise. Do you know that people started receiving alerts on Sunday, which some of us never expected?
“Our prayer is that the state should not have the kind of leader we had in the past eight years.”
The Benue State Chairman of the Nigeria Labour Congress, Terungwa Igbe, also hailed the governor for honoring his words.
“We want to thank His Excellency for keeping his promise,” the labor leader said in an interview with our correspondent.
Also, a worker in the Local Government Service Commission, Bernard Achue, commended the governor for honoring his promise to pay.
“At the time he made the promise during his broadcast on June 12 that workers would begin to receive alerts as from June 25, some of us did not take it seriously, especially when the day fell on Sunday.
“Surprisingly, some workers started receiving alerts yesterday (Sunday) but I received mine this (Monday) morning. I thank God for giving us a man of God and I pray he continues like this.
“You may not understand the reason we are so happy. Many people have lost their lives due to lack of money to go to hospital,” Achua said.
