As controversies continue to trail the local government autonomy, Anambra State Governor Charles Soludo has taken a sharp disagreement with workers of local government areas in the state over the implementation of the scheme, describing it as an aberration.

Speaking during the flag-off of the Anambra State Local Government Service Commission Week at Prof. Dora Akunyili Women Development Centre in the Awka area of the state on Wednesday, June 26, 2024, Soludo said the workers craving local government autonomy were not properly informed of the underlying disadvantages, adding that the system will not benefit them.

The governor also disclosed that over 397 ghost workers have been weeded out of the 21 local government areas of Anambra State through solid verification and value rebirth system.

He said: “Local government autonomy is very funny. There’s an ongoing debate on local government autonomy and the entire staff of local governments put together are moving from one local government to another.

“In full autonomy, it will mean that each of the local government will have to employ their own staff and that’s where you will grow and retire.

“This is where the problem is. In the Pool staffing that you have had, we have a serious decision to make, the Pension Act was passed and it is not being implemented in Anambra.

New minimum wage: Tinubu to consult govs, private sector

“If the Pension Act was strictly implemented, nothing would have concerned the state with payment of pension and you will have to go to your local government areas when you retire for your pension and that is where you will hear that out of the 21 local government areas, only about few would be able to pay salaries.”

On pension and gratuity, Governor Soludo said his administration had to suspend deductions of pension from local government staff because of some discrepancies noticed in the remittance of deductions to the pension board.

Soludo added that his administration inherited accumulated four-year gratuity arrears running into about N14.6 billion.

The governor stated: “Temporarily we suspended deductions of pension because it was not remitted to pension board and this was to enable us do a wholistic study of what went wrong and when we finish we can come up with a comprehensive solution.

“There is no place in the world where we have a federating unit that you have three structures of federal, state and local government and they are all running separately; It’s an aberration.

“The only reason we pay you is because we have Joint Account, JAC. I want to assure you that we are working hard to bring back our local government system to be financially viable. We will go back to implementing pension law as designed for sustainability and we will have Civil Service Commission soon so it will deal with the rest of the civil servants’ promotion and other issues.

“Every day, we are working very hard to put Anambra on the map. We spent two years and refused to borrow. I’m managing your resources and we assure you of transparency because we are top five in fiscal responsibility and we want to remain top. We met four years gratuity arrears amounting to N14.6 billion in local government areas and we are clearing gratuities we met for four years.”

Soludo however said his administration has paid every retired staff of the local government system within the two years in office and assured that within a short period, the remaining arrears of gratuity will be cleared.

On the minimum wage, the governor said the issue was being negotiated awaiting President Bola Tinubu’s action in sending the bill to the National Assembly.

The Star