Piqued by the inability of the just concluded workers’ screening exercise to bring down its wage bills, the Kogi State government has introduced electronic attendance register to further checkmate the activities of the civil servants.

The state civil servants are already lamenting over the new clocking system, which they said would further impoverish them with the recent introduction of 50% salaries payment.

The new system which workers have to clock in between 7.30 and 8am for resumption, 12pm for break and 4pm for closure, on every working day, is being used to determine how many days and hours an individual worker spent in a month for the purpose of calculating the salary.

It was further learnt that the machines, which have the imputed workers’ biodata, were installed in all the ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDA) which are to be controlled from the office of the Accountant General of the state for the purpose of computing salaries on individual basis.

Kogi State government is the first state in the country to introduce clocking time regulations for its workers.

According to some civil servants who spoke on anonymity, the government has subtly commenced downsizing and technically introduced salary reduction.

“Come to think of it, for instance, a PRO deployed to ministry of environment and whose parent ministry is Ministry of Information will have to go to the ministry three times a day and still have to contend with his work at the ministry of environment, with enormous costs, as the two ministry are located far from each other.

“Also, those who are on essential services would have to stop whatever they are doing to rush to the ministry to clock in three times per day. Is the new system not meant to sack workers and also to reduce salaries, since workers are going to be paid on number of clockings?

“Why are governor Alhaji Yahaya Bello’s policies tailored towards punishing workers? This clocking system to us have not been adopted by any government in Nigeria, and even Construction Companies only used it for the purpose of computing over time rates”, ‎the angry worker lamented.