All Local Governments of Nigeria (ALGON) in Kwara State yesterday blamed its inability to shoulder monthly wage bill on over bloated workforce across local government areas in the state.

The body said it was painful the situation had raged despite efforts to address the crisis. Its state chairman, Mr Abdullateef Okandeji, who spoke exclusively to The Herald on telephone in Ilorin yesterday, said the recurrent expenditure of the third tier of government, one of which is wage bill, had become outrageous.

ALGON is an umbrella body of the council chairmen nationwide. The state chapter of the Nigeria Union of Local Government Employees (NULGE) had embarked on strike action to press home its demand for payment of salary arrears spanning five to six months.

But Okandeji swiftly posited that the council administration in the state was not looking in the direction of downsizing the workforce as a recipe to nip the salary impasse in the bud. He said introducing such measure would aggravate the unemployment climate with the labour market already saturated. The ALGON boss, who is also the council chairman of Ilorin East Local Government Area, stated that two prong solutions had been injected into the system to mitigate the salary debacle including reinvigoration of internally generated revenue machinery.

He said the local government authorities in agreement with the leadership of the workforce had resolved to prorate payments of salary following frequent reduction in the allocation coming to the third tier of government. "There were remote and immediate solutions being proffered. The immediate one is the current move to reinvigorate our IGR machinery. And now, we are trying to consolidate on the synergy we have with the state government, that whatever buffer that comes to the state government, part of it will be extended to the local governments.

"But the borderline is that we are heavily over-staffed, and nobody is talking about that one. Our wage bill is outrageous, we are carrying much more workforce than we needed. But because of the current exigency, we cannot look in that direction. Then, we are not talking about restructuring because we are going to add to the backlog of army of unemployed youths already in the labour market. "And the labour understands with us. We have been running it (the system) in the most transparent manner. Whatever we have, we lay it on the table and we have been sharing it prorata level pending when the global economic implication will improve", the ALGON chairman said.

On the bail out fund from the federation coffers, Okandeji stated, "It has nothing to do with the local government. It is arrangement between the federal government and the state government, not local government". However, the state NULGE yesterday gave condition to suspend the ongoing industrial action in the council workforce as dialogue between it and the state government.

The NULGE Secretary in the state, Mr Abayomi Afolabi, in a telephone chat, told our correspondent that the union opted for strike due to the refusal of the state government to open window of negotiation on how to offset salary arrears. "Up till now, there is no clear cut vision from the state government side on the payment of arrears of salaries being owed local government workers, and that is what is bringing all this friction between us and the state government.

"What we have on the ground is that about 80 per cent of the local government (workers) in Kwara State had not been able to lay their hands on this 'salary. I mean from January up till date, some of the local government we are talking about are still in November and December last year, and so we have been having that difficulties.

"And the promise made by the Governor (Abdulfatah Ahmed) is about biometric. That immediately they are able to conclude issue of biometric, then they will fashion out how to pay the arrears of salaries owing local government workers. But the word is now changing", he said.