Ahead of the exit date for chairmen and councillors of different local government councils in Delta State, Governor Ifeanyi Okowa has signed into law the Delta State Independent National Electoral Commission (DSIEC) Bill and two other bills.
Councillors and chairmen in wards and local government are to exit power in October, barely in three weeks time, as the Delta State House of Assembly dissolved the board of the DSIEC.
On Tuesday, Sheriff Oborevwori, speaker of the Assembly, accompanied by his deputy, Friday Osanebi, clark of the House, Lyna Ochulor, and other principal officers of the legislature, had presented the DSIEC bill with two other bills namely: the Local Government Amendment Bill (2017) and the Administration of Criminal Justice Bill (2016) to the governor for assent, at Government House, Asaba.
Governor Okowa at the occasion, witnessed by some members of the state executive council, observed, “the signing into law of the DSIEC Bill 2017 is very important at this point in time, the law will strengthen the activities of the Delta State Independent Electoral Commission and I believe that with this action, members of the commission will be appointed to take office for the smooth conduct of the local government elections.”
The governor, who lauded the vibrancy and cooperation of the state legislators in making laws that will ensure good governance, respect for rule of law and progressive society, said his administration would continue to support local government councils to offset their salary arrears.
Throwing more light on the situation with the local government councils, the governor disclosed that some of the local government councils are heavily indebted to their staff as a result of having a lot of teachers and employees. He however noted that there are some local government councils in the state that are not owing salary arrears.
He said that efforts are on to ensure that only genuine workers earn salaries and called on the unions in the local government councils to support the ongoing biometric exercise to weed out ghost workers from the system.
“We will continue to support the local government councils for them to pay salaries; allocation to local government councils is very low which has made some of them to find it difficult to pay salaries,” he said.
He added, “there are councils that are not owing salaries because their wage bill is low, I am aware that some councils have paid salaries up to date and we are working hard to ensure that only those who work are paid as there are many ghost workers.”
The governor stressed that the essence of biometrics system introduced in the local government councils is to ensure that those who are fraudulently receiving salaries are fished out and removed from the pay roll to enable the councils have more money to pay their staff salaries.
