Workers, Councillors Decry Deplorable Work Environment In Okobo Council

By Uduonyi Dickson

OKOBO

Civil servants and councillors in Okobo Local Government Council have decried the deplorable state of the Council Secretariat.

 The council workers, who sought to remain anonymous, while chatting with our correspondent, recently at the Council Secretariat, Okobo, bemoaned the cruel working environment in the council, lamenting that “everything in the council are in shambles”.

 They pointed out that a good number of the workers do not have office space to carry out their duties as most of the offices in the secretariat are completely dilapidated.

 “You can go around and see things for yourself. The roof of some of the offices have caved in under the severe pressure of leakage. Those with roofs are terribly leaking without windows, tables and chairs,” they further stated.

 They noted that no civil servant would be motivated to report to work and give in their best under such frustrating circumstances, adding that the situation has affected their productivity. 

 Theirs words: “We cannot do our job effectively with the leaking roofs, without chairs, table, shelves to saved documents and other essential office equipment”.

 They stated that Okobo Local Government workers have been in this condition for a couple of years now with no solution insight, adding that they have made several complaints to successive council chairmen to no avail.

 The house leader of Okobo Legislative Council and the councilor representing Offi Ward 2, Hon. Anthony Uya, who confirmed the deplorable condition of offices in the Council in a telephone interview, however, said that the council chairman, Dr Sylvester Attah, was not sleeping over the situation.

 Uya disclosed that the council chairman had engaged a furniture maker to fix the broken furniture, but he regretted that the contract could not see the light of the day due to some circumstances.

 “The chairman, Dr Sylvester Attah, in our meeting recently, acknowledged the awful state of the council secretariat and promised to fix the furniture and carry out necessary renovation in the council as soon as possible,” Uya stated, expressing the optimism that the council would soon wear a new look.

 Apart from paucity of funds, according to one of the councillors, the reasons the council is in sordid mess was due to improper management of funds and paying priority attention to the immediate needs of the Council.

 His words: “the reasons those things are yet to be done is due tolack of money because allocation that comes in monthly is inadequate to maintain the properties or replace them with new ones.”

 Midweek Pioneer, however, learnt that the previous chairmen and lawmakers met and left the council in a similar way it is,presently, and the situation kept deteriorating as nothing was done to ameliorate it.

Our source noted that “there is special funds made available by the state government for the maintenance and provision of furniture for councillors and workers’ offices”, alleging that the funds may have been siphoned.