Election duty: PSC officials stranded over unpaid allowance
Staff of the Police Service Commission are currently stranded at different states of the federation where they were deployed to for the February 25 elections due to the non-payment of their allowances.
This was as they complained that they had yet to receive their allowances for Ekiti and Osun governorship elections held last year.
The PSC staff are deployed during elections to monitor the conduct of police officers on election duties and recommend sanctions in case of infractions.
An official of the commission, who pleaded for anonymity for fear of being victimised, told our correspondent that many of them had yet to return to continue with their daily routine at the commission.
The staff said, “We did not receive a dime from the commission before travelling to the states we were deployed to. We were asked to source for money, which we did. We were hoping that we would get paid as soon as we got there or immediately after the presidential election. But it is very unfortunate that till this moment we have not received a dime from the commission. As I speak to you many of us are stranded. We should have been back to continue with our normal task at the commission but we don’t have money to return.”
Another official said the workers were in debt, having borrowed money to embark on the assignment.
Calls to the line of the spokesperson for the commission, Ikechukwu Ani, were not answered.
But a commissioner representing the media in the commission, Austin Braimoh, denied that the board sat on the allowance for the junior staff members.
Braimoh said some top officials deployed for election duties were owed too, adding that the commission had not been funded for a while.
He said, “Besides, the monthly overhead always released to the commission has not been released too. Since January, no money has been released to the commission. We do not know those fighting the commission.”
