Workers in Delta may wait a little longer for the state government to implement the new National Minimum Wage policy.

This is because the government wants to embark on bio-metric screening of its workforce to determine its strength before paying the new salary.

The Commissioner for Economic Planning, Mr Kenneth Okpara, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Asaba that the stance was a turnaround from Gov. Emmanuel Uduaghan’s promise to the workers last year.

Uduaghan had pledged that the government would implement a minimum wage of N19,000 in December 2011 with arrears to be calculated from March.

In the recurrent expenditure of N169.82 billion provided in the 2012 budget, the governor had, while presenting the Appropriation Bill on December 7, 2011, announced that funds for the minimum wage had been included in the proposal.

But Okpara said that the government had decided that before the new salary regime could be implemented, the exact number of people in its employ must be ascertained.

As a result, he said that the government had constituted a committee to embark on the bio-metric screening, stressing that the measure was to ensure that ghost workers were eliminated in the system as much as possible.

The commissioner, who is a member of the committee, said that funds had been released for the assignment, expected to be completed in three months.

“The committee will review staffing in the state’s workforce and finger-print will be a major factor in the exercise.

“We must ensure that the salary figure that we will be releasing subsequently matches the number of persons remaining in the employment of the state after the bio-metric exercise.”

Okpara said the state government in December 2011 released N15 billion for the payment of contractual bills outstanding as at Nov. 24, 2011.

“With the funds, some ministries and agencies paid all debts owed their contractors while some, with heavy bills, paid substantial part.”

He explained that the idea of settling the bills was to restore confidence of the contractors and the people in the government “so that they can confidently continue to do business with the government and be assured of prompt payment.(NAN)