Benue state civil servants have continued to groan over the refusal of the state to pay salaries for over three months, a situation that has caused great hardship on the citizenry.
Some of the workers, who spoke on grounds of anonymity, regretted that owing to the ugly development, they could barely feed well or even pay other bills including school fees of their children and wards.
Similarly, business and other commercial activities in the state is at its lowest ebb as result of the non-payment of salaries since the state is purely a civil service state.
A barber on Konshisha Street, Thaddeus Akpa said he has been experiencing low patronage because of the present situation.
“Most of my customers are civil servants and I have not seen them for a long time and when I inquired about them, they simply told me that the situation is a bad one, that they cannot even cut their hairs again.
A petty trader at Wadata madam Abagail Ode also frowned at the situation which has affected her business badly.
But explaining the delay in the payment of salaries to civil servants to Journalists yesterday in Makurdi, the State Commissioner of Information, Mr Justin Amase blamed it on the shortfall in revenue allocation accruing to the State from the Federation accounts, intimating that the state government has put in place an internal revenue generation enhancement committee to ameliorate the situation.
Mr. Amase appealed for patience and understanding from the workers, assuring that their salaries will be paid soon.
It could be recalled that in August, civil servants embarked on a strike to press home the deduction of their salaries by the State government.
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