By Olaitan Ibrahim
Governor Seyi Makinde of Oyo State has approved the conversion of ad-hoc staff in the service of the 33 Local Government Councils in the State to permanent staff.
The decision, the governor said, was taken to bridge the gap in the workforce at the Local Government level, noting that the due process for the employment must be followed effectively and perfected within four weeks.
Speaking at the inauguration of the newly-built Local Government House and Staff Training School held in Ibadan, Governor Makinde assured that his administration would continue to seek innovative ways to support and collaborate with local government authorities for the benefits of the citizens in order to actualise his vision for the State.
“We will continue to work with the Local Government so that our vision at the State level can also be sold to the Local Government administrators. When there is synergy, we can achieve more”, he noted.
The governor added that when he came on board in 2019, he met a Local Government system that owed salaries, pensions and gratuities, explaining that his Administration had paid N18 billion in pension and over N15 billion in terms of gratuities to pensioners over time.
“For primary school teachers, their leave bonuses were last paid in 2017. The primary schools, PHCs and other things were in a bad shape. But we have paid the primary school teachers their leave bonus for 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023.
“So, we had to figure out a way of reducing this deficit and we won’t play games with anybody because they are our own people.
“We insisted that first line items must be drawn against the Local Government Account. It was a home-grown way of ensuring that outstanding pension and gratuities are paid. We have paid backlogs of over N18 billion in pension and we have also paid over N15 billion gratuities to retirees”, the governor said.
Governor Makinde also said his Administration had collaborated with the Local Government Councils to upgrade 209 PHCs, equip 264 PHCs and complete about 60 model schools. He added that his administration had, in conjunction with Local Government authorities, constructed and renovated hundreds of primary school classrooms through the Oyo State SUBEB intervention project.
He said, “We commissioned the first set of about 40km of roads in Ibadan in July and we have outstanding of about 60km to go in this first set. When we leave Ibadan, we will go to other zones.
So, rest assured, we will continue to seek innovative ways to collaborate with the Local Government Administration to the benefit of our people.”