LG Polls: Ad-Hoc Staff Besiege SIECOM Office Over Non-payment

Ad-Hoc staff who were recruited by the State Independent Election Commission (SIECOM) in the just concluded local government elections into the 23 local government areas of Kaduna State, yesterday besieged the SIECOM office over non payment of their entitlements.

The Ad-hoc staff numbering over 50 protested the inability of the commission to effect their payment even after the elections were over.

According to their spokesperson who calls himself Idris Muhammed, “we are the people who have worked as presiding officers during the local government elections and we are calling for our allowances to be paid.

“It was fortunate that the elections have been conducted and it was successful but they have not paid us and the most unfortunate thing is that there is no information dissemination on how the money will be paid.

Today, they informed us that we should come to the local government, we went but there was nothing done on it.

So we went back to SIECOM office to ask them but we were not given any reasonable information.

All what they kept saying is that they are going to wait for the Election Officers (Eos) of the Local Government.”

When contacted, the Secretary of the SIECOM, Alhaji Umar Umar, said, “we are working hard to pay them. We are following due process before carrying out the payment. But we don’t need to tell them all this. Very soon our officials will go to the 23 local Government areas to do the payment” he assured.