By CrossRiverWatch Admin
Close to six thousand former appointees of the the governor of Cross River state, Senator Ben Ayade, are turning jobless from today.
That is sequel to a directive from the governor in a statement last week, that all appointees prepare their handover notes and submit to him through the permanent secretaries of their various MDAs on or before, today, Friday.
The Chief Press Secretary to governor Ayade, Mr. Christian Ita, told CrossRiverWatch that the directive affects “all appointees without tenured terms.”
Our Government House correspondent, further reports that “the only appointees exempted are those heading statutory Boards like SUBEB, Primary Health Care, Water Board, etc. Heads of those Boards have tenures that must be completed before they can be removed from office. And we understand that quite a number of appointees have turned in their handover notes as directed by the governor.”
The governor had signalled in his statement that he intends to reduce the size of his cabinet considerably for a more effective government in his second term.
Government House sources also hinted CrossRiverWatch that the hiking of minimum wage from eighteen to thirty thousand Naira by the federal government has also made the governor to reconsider keeping close to six thousand appointees on the payroll.
A senior former government official who spoke to this reporter anonymously, said: “His Excellency may not have more than 18 Commissioners in the second tenure. 1 per LGA. These 28 Commissioners haven’t added the necessary value. He has to cut down the appointees wage bill and channel that money into the new minimum wage. His Excellency has never owed salary since he assumed office, some months, he even pays in advance; and he has no intention of eroding that record.” Our source concluded.
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