Taraba sanitation chair defends salary cut for street sweepers

The Chairman of the Taraba State Environmental and Sanitation Agency, Illiya Kefas, on Tuesday said the decision to reduce the monthly allowance of members of the Operation Keep Taraba Clean programme, popularly known as street sweepers, from N15,000 to N10,000 was an internal administrative measure and not a directive from Governor Agbu Kefas.

According to the Tribune, the clarification came a day after he told journalists in Jalingo on Monday that the reduction followed a directive from the governor aimed at managing available resources after the recruitment of new workers into the state and local government civil services.

Speaking on Tuesday, the agency chairman said the salary adjustment became necessary because of the agency’s increasing workforce and operational expenses across the state’s 16 local government areas.

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

The development marks the latest reduction in the earnings of the street sweepers since the programme was introduced in 2023.

The workers were initially engaged by the state government in 2023 with a monthly allowance of N20,000.

However, in March 2024, their monthly allowance was reduced to N15,000 after they were reportedly asked to either accept a N5,000 cut or forfeit their positions.

In May 2026, the workers received N10,000, representing another N5,000 reduction and leaving their earnings at half of what they received when the programme began.

Explaining the latest adjustment, Kefas said the agency manages a large workforce, including 16 local government coordinators, supervisors, monitoring teams and more than 100 casual workers engaged in sanitation activities across the state.

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

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He added, “We also have supervisors. The least we pay them is N50,000 per person, and we have 10 of them,” he added.

According to him, the agency spends over N5m monthly on feeding casual workers engaged in sanitation activities across the state’s 16 local government areas.

“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,” he said.

Kefas said team leaders supervising roadside sanitation exercises also receive daily allowances, while the agency commits substantial resources to waste evacuation and other environmental sanitation activities.

He maintained that the agency’s financial commitments made the salary adjustment necessary to sustain its operations.

In a subsequent text message to journalists on Monday, the chairman defended the decision, saying workers who were dissatisfied with the new allowance were free to leave.

“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 stated.

He added: “There is nothing wrong to slash their salaries. Do you journalists ask us how we manage the agency?”

The chairman also cited limited allocations from the Federation Account and the state’s expanding wage obligations following the recruitment of new civil servants as factors affecting the agency’s finances.