Finance Commissioner, Kemi Adeosun has told Nigerian Civil Servants not
to justify stealing of public funds because of poor salaries. Adeosun
stated this while inaugurating the Efficiency Unit of the Ministry Of
Finance in Abuja yesterday November 30th.
"We are going to look up all the causes that make government spending
extremely inefficient and we are going to circulate those results to the
agencies so that they will get a circular saying this is on paper and
if you go above it, the Permanent Secretary or whoever is approving it
needs to have a reason for doing so.
We are setting a benchmark; at the moment, there are
no guidelines; and where there are no guidelines, there is no sin. So,
we need to establish those guidelines to guide how people spend money.
We cannot justify stealing and say because my salary is low so it
justifies stealing. Not everybody steals and not everybody is willing to
steal, and stealing is not a way to address low remuneration. Stealing
is stealing and it is a crime; you cannot steal and say because my
salary is low that was why I stole; what about people who have no
salaries? Stealing is stealing and we must address it. It is not
acceptable. We need to address it and we will do so very aggressively.
There is no excuse for stealing.”she said
Adeosun said the introduction of the Efficiency Unit in the ministry was
to checkmate the manner in which government money is being spent in
this very challenging economic times.
“Our own initial reviews have found wide variations in the prices of
basic items between departments and within agencies. Printer cartridges
of the same specification ranged in price from N16,000 to N62,000".she
said
She said that the obvious differences in these items will no longer be tolerated in these economic hard times.
No comments:
Post a Comment