The Chairman of the Taraba State Environmental and Sanitation Agency, Illiya Kefas, has defended the decision to reduce the monthly allowance of street sweepers under the Operation Keep Taraba Clean programme from N15,000 to N10,000, saying the measure was necessary to sustain the agency’s operations.

Kefas said on Tuesday that the adjustment was an internal administrative decision and not a directive from Governor Agbu Kefas, distancing the state government from the controversial move.

“The arrangement was an internal decision to sustain the activities of the agency and not a directive from the governor,” he said.

His clarification came a day after he told journalists that the reduction was linked to efforts to manage resources following the recruitment of additional workers into the state and local government civil services.

According to Kefas, the agency’s growing workforce and rising operational costs across Taraba’s 16 local government areas made the adjustment unavoidable.

The latest reduction means the street sweepers now earn half of the N20,000 monthly allowance they received when the programme was launched in 2023.

In March 2024, the allowance was reduced from N20,000 to N15,000 after workers were reportedly given the option of accepting a pay cut or leaving the programme. The latest adjustment took effect in May 2026.

Kefas said the agency also bears the cost of maintaining local government coordinators, supervisors, monitoring teams and casual sanitation workers.

“We have 16 Local Government Coordinators. We pay some N200,000, while the least among them earns N100,000. We also have a monitoring team,” he said.

He added that supervisors receive a minimum of N50,000 monthly and that the agency spends more than N5 million each month feeding casual workers engaged in sanitation activities across the state.

“There are more than 100 casual staff across the 16 local governments. We spend over N5 million on feeding the boys who work on a daily basis,” Kefas said.

He said the agency also incurs costs related to waste evacuation, sanitation monitoring and allowances for team leaders supervising environmental exercises.

Defending the decision further, Kefas said workers dissatisfied with the new allowance were free to leave the programme.

“I have the right to ask my people to work at N10,000. Anyone interested will work, and if you are not, you can go your way,” he said in a text message to journalists.

The agency chairman also cited limited allocations from the Federation Account and increasing wage obligations following the recruitment of new civil servants as factors placing pressure on the agency’s finances.