Uduaghan inherits 352 projects at a cost of N105 billion from Ibori -Ogeah

..Says State wage bill worrisome

Author: By Spence Idighiri

The Uduaghan led government inherited a total of 352 projects at a cost of N105billion from the previous administration of Chief James Onanefe Ibori, out of which a total of 181 have been completed.

 The present administration on its part, have initiated a total of 399 projects valued at N254 billion from May 2007 till date, out of which, 17 were repudiated for non-performance, while Deltans were assured that over 80 percent of the projects would be completed within the life span of the current administration.

State Commissioner for Information, Bar. Chike Ogeah while disclosing this to Journalists during a press briefing in Asaba, also revealed that the state would soon carry out a new biometrics capture exercise in order to weed the state of the menace of ghost workers.

He said the decision to embark on the exercise was reached in Lagos, during a meeting of the State Economic Advisory Team led by Bismark Rewane.

Bar. Ogeah who was flanked during the briefing by the Ministry’s Permanent Secretary, Sir, Austine Mowah and the General Manager of the Pointer Newspapers, Mr. Bosah Iwobi said the decision for the new biometric exercise was necessitated by the discovery that the state wage bill has now risen from N6.8billion monthly to N7.1billion.

The Commissioner said the sum of N607 million and another N100 million has been set aside for the year’s pilgrimage to the holy land and the State’s counterpart funding for the BRACED Commission.

On Internally Generated Revenue (IGR), he said the Board was commended as the state IGR, has risen from N12.2 billion in 2007 to N45.7 billion in 2012 and said the state is targeting N61billion in 2013 out of this, he said the sum of N23billion has already been realized between January to May, 2013.

He promised that aggressive publicity and the need to educate the people on tax payment, will be embarked upon in order to realize the overall objective of the state’s decision to deploy internally-generated revenue to take care of the state’s wage bill.