By ANAYO OKOLI
UMUAHIA— Governor Theodore Orji of Abia State said yesterday workers in three parastatals were not being paid the new minimum wage of N20,100 because of fictitious names on the payroll.

Addressing workers at this year’s May Day rally at Ibeku High School, Umuahia, Orji listed the affected parastatals to include Agricultural Development Programme, ADP, State Library Board and State Council for Arts and Culture.

The governor said he had directed the office of the Accountant General to look into it and resolve the problem.

According to him, Abia State workers are one of the highest paid in the country.

“As we are paying them N20, 100 per month, against the N18,000 approved by the Federal Government, we are determined to ensure that they are well taken care of,” Orji said.

He said his government was not ready to toy with  welfare of workers in the state, noting that if workers were not properly taken care of, they could destabilise the system.

Governor Orji maintained that his administration had never borrowed any money from either banks or bond market to develop the state.

“When you recall that our monthly allocation from the federation account is N3.2 billion, while our wage bill is N2.5 billion with what we are doing you can see that the difference is clear,” he said.

In his speech, Acting State Chairman of NLC, C. C. Ebeniro, noted that Abia State was  still the highest in the area of paying the new minimum wage in the country.

According to him, the gesture made the workers in the state not to embark on any strike in the state during the agitation for the new minimum wage.

He said:  “Right from the onset our governor accepted to pay higher and set up a committee to look into it.”

Ebeniro urged the governor to look into the issue of employing more workers, saying there was shortage of workers as a result of the transfer of non-indigenes to their different states of origin.