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Osun state chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, said it has uncovered reasons why Osun workers wage bill has increased to N3.6 billion in Jan 2015 as against the N1.7billion it was as at Dec 2014.
In a press statement issued yesterday in Osogbo by Prince Diran Odeyemi, the party’s Director of Media and Strategy, he said “many fictitious names said to be Lagos based supporters of Gov Aregesola were added to genuine workers in the state and have since been receiving salaries”
“Rather than debunk this accusation with rhetorics we challenge the state government to publish unedited the report of the recently concluded screening exercise it conducted”
“We have it on good authority that over N1billion was being paid to many Lagos based individuals who have no job in Osun but added to the list of genuine workers which eventually increased astronomically the wage bill from N1.7billion to N3.6billion”
“Now that the wage bill has come down to N2.6 billion monthly, we want to caution governor Aregbesola against introducing schools fees, strange taxes and levies on the people of the state just as we urge him to make public its financial records of allocations, IGR and expenditures if truly his administration is for the people of Osun.
The party said the warning became necessary in view of the “cameo announcement of austerity measures that will come inform of property taxes, increased tenement rates and income tax, TV license all of which were contained in the recommendation of a Lagos based tax consultant employed by the governor.
The party said while it recognized the fact the Osun debt is in the region of N480billion that will be serviced with over N2billion monthly for the next 20 years, people of the state should not be made to pay for fund embezzled neither must they be further burdened with excessive taxation.
The PDP also called for sincerity and accountability in the governance of the state and decried the presence of many draining pipes such as use of consultants in place of commissioners saying “this is just a perfect way of stealing from public treasury and ferrying our money to Lagos”
“Instead of Ogbeni Aregbsola inflicting more pains on the people, he should work on recouping back all public monies being kept in private pockets.”
