Cross River Governor, Senator Ben Ayade, has directed that January salaries for workers in the state be paid on or before the end of the week in order to ensure that their children returned to school.

Ayade gave this directive on Tuesday, when he paid an unscheduled visit to the state’s Land and Urban Development Ministry in Calabar, to ascertain the level of staff punctuality.

The governor expressed dissatisfaction with the level of commitment from the staff of the ministry including the commissioner

“We paid so early (15th) in December and so you should be broke by now and this is the time you need money to send the children back to school,” adding that “I am also concerned about your welfare and well being and that is why I am directing that the salaries for the month of January be paid between now and Friday,” Ayede said.

He stressed the need for workers to be disciplined and imbibe an industrial culture to achieve his administration’s plans to revolutionize the state industrially.

Ayade said it was time Cross Riverians acted to correct the impression that the state was only about culture and tourism.
According to the governor, “I go round the world to bring investors to come into our state to invest because over time, as a people who are known for culture and tourism, there is a wrong impression that all we do is to know how to do culture and tourism and so Cross River State has become a signature state for just tourism which is not the truth.

“We are a very hardworking people, so we have an industrial background. I believe that there can be an industrial harmony between tourism and industry.”

Frowning on the lackluster attitude of the civil servants, Ayade directed that the gates of the ministry be shut upon his arrival and charged them to be industrious.

He said: “My idea is to see how we can revolutionize the state and create industries, create opportunities for job expansion, provide opportunities for people to exhaust their great natural potential and to achieve this, it can’t work if we have a civil service attitude.

“To prepare the people to be ready for the industrial emancipation that is coming soon, everybody must be industrially prepared to provide an industrial hand to support the investors that are coming in. With almost 150 staff you have less than 60 present at 8 O’clock, it is obvious that my efforts are not working. If it was, I expect to see that at least the head, the commissioner himself should be here at this point.