The Anambra State Government has made good on its threat to deduct money from the salaries of workers who failed to report to work on Mondays.
Mondays were previously declared sit-at-home days by the Indigenous People of Biafra to pressure the Federal Government to release their leader, Mazi Nnamdi Kanu.
It will be recalled that in January, the state government announced it would implement a pro rata payment system, deducting wages from civil servants who failed to report to work on Mondays. The governor also used the opportunity to announce an end to the sit-at-home protest.
Meanwhile, on Monday, it was a tale of woe among Anambra State civil servants, as many lamented substantial deductions from their February salaries upon receiving bank alerts for their wages.
At the Jerome Udoji State Secretariat in Awka, the state capital, some workers complained that the deductions from their salaries did not correspond with the number of Mondays they had failed to report to work.
One worker, who requested anonymity, said a colleague in his ministry received only N100 as payment for February after the deductions.
The staff member, from the Ministry of Information, lamented that out of his total salary of over N80,000, he received just N3,500.
He said: “One of my colleagues said she received her salary with N10,000 deducted. The cuts are irregular, but I think there were errors in the computation because some people who missed work only once or twice had substantial deductions from their salaries.”
When contacted, the state Commissioner for Information, Dr. Law Mefor, confirmed to journalists that the deductions were penalties for failing to report to work on Mondays.
He said: “The salary cut is a punishment for failure to come to work on Mondays. The instruction was that when you come to work on Mondays, you clock in and, at the close of work, clock out. That is to show that you came to work.
“But if you came to work on Mondays and did not clock in and clock out, it means you did not come to work because there is no evidence to show that you were present,” Mefor added.
About Author
