Abdulganeey Adeyemi Abiola
Despite prioritizing Minimum wage in the 2021 budget proposal submitted to the House of Assembly on Tuesday, the Kwara State Government has said negotiations with the Labour Union will continue.
This was contained in a statement released by the Chief Press Secretary to the Kwara State governor, Mr. Rafiu Ajakaye.
The governor had presented a budget proposal of N123,091,307,468 tagged: budget of reformation and inclusive growth for the incoming year.
He explained that though the proposal contains provisions for payment of the minimum wage, but the government would only sustain such provisions once it reaches a deal with the labour as well as effecting promotion for different cadres of the civil service, AbdulRazaq told lawmakers in a summary of the budget speech.
He said, “The budget is 54% recurrent expenditure and 46% capital expenditure, a fallout of the dwindling revenue from oil and internally generated revenue, and an urgency to prioritise anti-poverty measures to cushion the effects of general economic crisis on vulnerable households and small businesses amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.”
However, AbdulRazaq hinted at the possibility of the administration taking bonds to finance key infrastructural projects later in the year.
AbdulRazaq analyzed that ‘Education’ gulps a huge chunk of 25.5% of the budget proposal, an improvement from last year, followed by health which grabs 13.7%. Economic affairs — a category that includes road construction and other infrastructural projects — is also taking another 25.7%, indicating the administration’s intention to spend its way through the current recession and other hardships imposed by the pandemic. The general public service, a budget subhead that deals with the civil service, gets 26.5 of the votes.
