Daily Independent Online.
*
Thursday, June 17, 2004.
‘Why FG introduced
monetisation’
By Dennis Mernyi
Special Correspondent, Abuja
The
Federal Government introduced the current monetisation to reduce expenditure
and cut wastes, Information
and National Orientation Minister, Chief Chukwuemeka Chikelu, has said. He
insisted that the government only wanted to reduce the high cost of governance
but not to target any section of its citizens, as being wrongly understood by
some people.
This explanation, he said, has become imperative
given the impression, making the rounds about the introduction of the policy.
Chikelu, who spoke in an interview with journalists
in Abuja on the one-year anniversary of this administration, also said the government was spending too much on its
workers’ workers in the past with little to show for it. “ The
concept of monetisation right from the initial stage was never meant to run
down people or retrench workers, it was simply meant to address the situation
where a higher or low level officer in the public service has a whole range of
his or her benefits in cash so that he also learns how to manage it resourcefully”,
he said, adding:
“We spend too much on running this government.
The expenditure was becoming too much and the government said look, lets do as
it is been done in the private sector. In fact, it is not targeted at any
body”.
Giving reasons on why some officers are likely to
lose their jobs in the cause of the monetisation exercise, the minister stated
that in order to reduce waste of resources and get a reasonable size of the
productive workforce of the public service, some officers, found to be less
productive will be certainly laid off to give room for more energetic and fresh
graduates.
