The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Anambra State on Friday rejected the “illegal deductions” from civil servants’ salaries by the state government.
The state government had claimed that funds deducted from the workers’ salaries are being used for the recapitalisation of Ndi-Olu Micro Finance Bank Limited (NMFB).
But the PDP Chairman in the state, Chief Ndubisi Nwobu, said at a news conference in Awka that the party was worried by the development.
Nwobu, therefore, charged the state government to stop the deductions forthwith and reimburse the workers to the tune of the deductions.
According to him, the state government ordered a three-month deduction of varying percentages from workers’ salaries for the bank’s recapitalisation.
He quoted a memo purportedly written by the state’s Head of Service on March 8, 2021, where the Accountant -General, and Secretary of Joint Account Allocation Committee were directed to make such deductions as “contributions to the stabilisation of the troubled bank”.
Nwobu said the memo arose following Central Bank of Nigeria’s (CBN) directive to all micro finance banks in the country to raise their capital base before April 30.
He said the memo directed percentage deductions as follow: Level 1-3: N500, Level 4-7: N1, 200, Level 8: N2,300, Level 9-10: N2,250 and Level 12-13: N4, 500, Level 14-16: N5,000 and Level 17: N5,200.
The chairman said: “PDP is genuinely concerned about the welfare of Anambra civil servants, who are coerced to part with certain percentages of meager take home salaries.
“One begins to wonder why the workers, whose salaries were deducted from March, will continue to be exploited for three months when the CBN’s directive was meant to be implemented before April 30.
“It is on a record that Anambra civil servants belong to the class of least paid workers in Nigeria.
“What a responsible and responsive government should be doing now is to think of what to do to alleviate their sufferings and not making things harder for them through illegal deductions from their salaries.
“The party shares the pains of our workers and condemns the APGA government’s exploitative tendencies in its entirety.
“We demand that the deducted money from the workers’ salaries be returned immediately.
“We assure Anambra people, especially civil servants, of a better deal under a PDP-controlled administration.”
