A Bill providing for such punishment for both public and private sector employers who fail to pay or delay the payment of workers’ salaries, passed its second reading in the House last March. Never heard of since, the Bill also proposed that underpayment of workers’ wages, pension and emoluments would attract stiff sanctions and also punish employers who fail to pay or delay the payment of their workers’ salaries. Such penalties would include the loss of 10 to 20 per cent of the value of the delayed salary.
It is self-evident that late payment or no payment of salary encourages corruption as workers would be forced to seek unlawful alternative means to meet financial and family obligations. Not all late payment is due to inability to pay, as it is common practice in some government agencies to lodge workers’ salaries in fixed deposit accounts to yield interests for some corrupt officials. This practice has become so widespread that the Inspector-General of Police, Mr MD Abubakar recently condemned the recurring delay in the payment of salaries of the Nigeria Police Force personnel by some commercial banks involved in processing of their salaries. There have been persisting reports of rising tension among federal civil servants because most of its agencies have not paid salaries and allowances in full. Reports that the majority of such government agencies, including those under the Presidency have not paid salaries in full up to date are worrisome. Staff members have every right to express discontent over the delay, especially following reports that the government was broke and was mopping up remnant of monies in some of its accounts in the Central Bank. Even when the Finance Minister, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, admitted that there was no money to pay state government allocations in full, the Director-General of the Budget Office, Mr Bright Okogwu and the the Accountant-General of the Federation, Mr Jonah Otunla, noted that Nigeria was not bankrupt but was only having “cash flow problems”. What led to these ‘problems’ has not been explained.
The Office of the Accountant General of the Federation provided a possible lead when it advised all federal ministries, departments and agencies that have not updated their bank details in compliance with the Nigerian Uniform Bank Account Number (NUBAN) policy to do so, warning that failure might result in the delay of payment of salaries. The deadline by CBN for compliance with the NUBAN policy became effective July1, 2013, as part of a wider integrated personnel payroll system. In almost all the states, workers are owed salaries apparently because of late arrival of allocation from the federation account; this has crippled many activities. Late payment of salaries is a practice that is more common in government than it is in the private sector. However, public sector workers can more or less be rest assured that they will be paid anyway, unlike the private sector where the possibility of folding up without settling its debt to workers is very high. The need for just such legislation as the one before the House of Representatives is imperative. The legislators should hasten action on it in order to protect the workers who must get paid promptly for work done.