The Ogun State Governor, Prince Dapo Abiodun says the state government has started plans to convert buses from diesel to CNG (Compressed Natural Gas), to cushion the impact of the removal of fuel subsidy in the state.
Abiodun disclosed this in an interview on Channels Television on Tuesday evening.
He said, “The conversion is not restricted to state-owned mass transit buses alone and will extend to privately owned minibuses across the state at the expense of the government.”
Similarly, the governor also disclosed that the state government will begin the distribution of a cash palliative of N10,000 to public servants in the state, with effect from July.
Governor Abiodun noted that the palliative will last for three months and was done in consultation with relevant bodies.
He said, “Paying special allowances is nothing novel or new to the system. It’s just that in this instance, we have designed this alongside the members of our labor unions. We just didn’t wake up one morning and arbitrarily chose to pay them N10,000.
“We sat down with TUC, JNC, and NLC weeks ago. After several meetings, we agreed that N10,000 across board from levels 1–17 will create that immediate relief to civil servants and pensioners that have to move every day.
“This amount will be paid over the next three months in the first instance, because we’ve identified the fact that we need to have an immediate intervention, then an immediate to medium-term intervention, and a long-term intervention.
“It’s our hope that at the expiration of the first three months, our medium-term intervention plans will have begun to unfold. So we can begin to take out the N10,000 cash palliative. The idea is that this will not be pensionable and, as such, will continue to be regarded as an allowance as against their basic salary and other emoluments.”
Abiodun also noted that there will be about 280,000 direct and indirect beneficiaries of the cash palliatives, and he expects the private sector to follow suit.
He said, “What we aim to do is to immediately begin this intervention, believing that the private sector will also begin to follow suit because, as you know, we cannot intervene by this means with the private sector because they don’t work for us.
“However, we have other provisions in that our list that we rolled out yesterday that will affect as many of those who are not in public service as possible,” he added.
(Courtesy, excluding headline, Vanguard)
