Jang signs N112bn 2012 budget into law .


Monday, 02 April 2012 13:58 NAN
http://www.businessdayonline.com/NG/index.php/news/111-politics/35353-jang-signs-n112bn-2012-budget-into-law

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Gov. Jonah Jang of Plateau on Monday signed law, the state’s 2012 Appropriation Bill of more than N112.7 billion.

Out of the N112, 763,528,563 billion provided in the budget, N44, 184,761,270 was set aside for recurrent expenditure while N68, 578,767,293 would be for capital spending. Speaking at the occasion in Jos, Jang said that the budget, had an increase of N720 million, representing 30.27 per cent over that of 2011. The governor declared that the budget would focus on education, health, water and sanitation, agriculture and the completion of ongoing projects.

According to him, other sectors will also be given due attention, as his administration remains committed to sustainable development in all sectors and across the state. Jang emphasised that development must take a stronger drive for the benefit of the people. He expressed commitment to running a functional, people-oriented administration that would take governance to the people, especially at the grassroots.

The governor explained that government would expand its current initiative in agriculture through a N4 billion loan facility from the Central Bank of Nigeria, He said the establishment of Agricultural Services and Training Centres in the state was part of efforts to boost agriculture. The overall aim, he said, was to empower as many people as possible economically by making farming easy and profitable.

The governor said that the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) office in the state was also intervening in the water, agriculture and health sectors particularly in the rural areas. Jang, however, lamented what he termed the continued thwarting of his administration’s efforts by workers through corrupt acts particularly the falsification of names in salary vouchers. ``Government has continued to lose millions of Naira monthly through this racket. We have already evolved a measure to fish out those behind this act and will deal with them appropriately. ``We have undertaken a bio-metric data capturing of all workers and yet, they still got into that bio-metric system and today, we still don’t know how many workers we have. ``We have just adopted a form for every civil servant to fill, to be signed by the immediate supervisor of each staff, countersigned by the staff officer of that MDA. "And then the permanent secretary of the ministry or the head of that organisation. ``But, if we still have ghost workers after this exercise, then the three signatories on that form will face the consequences which could mean dismissal because they would have been part of the connivance. ”

Jang explained that the state had compared its workforce with those of other states and found out that its wage bill was about double those of such states. ``We find out that Yobe has about 48,000 workers and pays about N800 million as salary. The bio-metric system puts Plateau workers at a little above 17,000 workers yet, our wage bill is N1.6 billion. ``So you can see that our situation requires urgent action and we hope by the time we resolve that of the state workers, we will go down to local governments where there are more rackets than the state. ”

He commended the legislators for the prompt passage of the appropriation bill and for seeking clarification whenever such was needed, pledging to work harmoniously with other arms of government.

Jang presented the appropriation bill to the Assembly on December 20, 2011, and was passed about a month ago by the legislature.