The Anambra State Government has deducted the salaries of civil servants who failed to report for duty on Mondays in compliance with the sit-at-home directive issued by separatist groups in the South-East.
The state had in January announced a pro-rata payment system, under which deductions would be made from the salaries of workers who did not attend work on Mondays.
Many civil servants expressed shock and frustration after receiving February salary alerts on Tuesday, reporting significant reductions. At the Jerome Udoji State Secretariat in Awka, the state capital, workers said some deductions appeared disproportionate to the number of Mondays missed.
One employee, who asked not to be named, said a colleague received only N100 for February after deductions. The worker, employed at the Ministry of Information, said he received just N3,500 out of an over N80,000 salary.
He added: “One of my colleagues said that she received her salary with N10,000 cut off from it. The cuts are irregular, but I think there were mistakes in the computing because some people who missed work only once or twice had huge deductions from their salaries.”
When contacted, the Commissioner for Information, Dr. Law Mefor, confirmed that the deductions were intended as punishment for failing to report to work on Mondays.
“The salary cut is a punishment for failure to come to work on Mondays. The instruction was that when you come to work on Mondays, you clock in, and, at the close of work, you clock out. That is to show that you came to work,” he said.
He added: “But, if you came to work on Mondays but you didn’t clock in, and didn’t clock out, it means that you didn’t come to work because there is no evidence to show that you came to work.”