Kwara State Government yesterday said it would adopt Federal Government's performance contract policy into the state civil service so as to make civil servants to be more effective and efficient.

The state Head of Service, Alhaji Dabarako Mohammed, who disclosed this to journalists in Ilorin, during a chat, said emphasis would be on training and re-training of the entire workforce in the state, while provision of working equipment and comfortable working environment for the civil servants would be part of government's focus this year.

According to him, "the immediate past administration of Senator Bukola Saraki renovated the phase one of the state secretariat, while the present administration of Governor AbdulFatah Ahmed, had extended it to ministries of works, lands and Housing, commerce and cooperatives as well as Bureau of Lands."

He also said the renovation has been extended to ministry of health and local government service commission secretariat, while others that were yet to be renovated would receive government's attention this year in order to ensure that work is being carried out in a conducive working environment.

Dabarako assured the state civil servants that government would continue to impact positively on them, with a promise that names of civil servants due for promotion would be forwarded from their ministries to the office of the Head of service for necessary actions.

On the workers of the state media moved to the ministries, the Head of Service said those that were yet to receive their salaries from November and December would collect it in January and urged them to ensure proper documentation to ease the process.

Dabarako further stated: "There are two reasons responsible for it. You know we moved some workers from media houses because they could not pay 18, 000 minimum wage. Before the introduction of 18,000 minimum wage in Nigeria, Kwara State wage was around N900 million and immediately we came up with N18,000 minimum wage, the staff we took from media houses now have not been added to the wage bill yet and you know we are already in the year but it will definitely go into it and this has gone to N1.3 billion. So, that is a substantial increase."

He stressed: "So if anybody is saying that our recurrent is more than the expenditure, maybe the person wants to adopt the Sanusimetrics that says that we should sack people and if that is what the person is saying that we should sack civil servants, then the Nigeria Labour Congress and Trade Union Congress will watch it. They should watch it, I don't want to debate on that because that is a political statement."

The Head of Service stated further that the government is currently embarking on various capital projects like the ongoing massive renovation of general hospitals in the state which when completed would require additional manpower to man the centres.

He said: "The governor of the state, Alhaji Abdulfatah Ahmed, has gone ahead to renovate hospitals which are almost completed. If you go to the former UITH building in Ilorin, a massive renovation is going on there, at the end of the day if you don't recruit doctors and nurses, it would be meaningless."