“We also discipline them because we are all apostles of the Stronger Delta Agenda of the Dr. Ifeanyi Okowa government to ensure that we finish strong”, he pointed out.
He stated this on Wednesday June 9th 2021, while addressing members of the Indigenous Correspondents’ Chapel in Asaba.
“That is the more reason why every facet of this government is committed and there is no room for complacency as the governor rightly noted during the swearing-in recently”.
Continuing he said: “we have some of our staff that we sent to schools that we cater for from time to time but in terms of training since we came onboard, there have been series of training programmes. As we assumed office, within the first two months, we held a major retreat in Sapele, where the most senior administrative and accounting officers which includes the Head of Personnel Management (HPMs) and treasures to come together and brainstorm about how local government administration can move forward, that we did just within two months.
“And I can tell you that since that retreat, there have a lot of changes in their attitude in the operations and relationship between the staff and the political class in the local government levels. From time to time we take each of the departments in stages for training with maybe average of 120 to 130 staff for training at different locations across the state to enhance their development.
“And that training programme is continuous. There is no month we don’t engage in training, as I am talking to you here now, as soon as we finish from here, we will be moving to declare open a workshop holding at Orchid Hotel. We take our training programme very seriously because we know that is the only way we can improve the standard of our staff and we don’t compromise our training programmes because it is one of our cardinal points”, he stressed.
On the recently granted local government autonomy, he said: “just recently, financial autonomy has been granted to them to get their money directly from the federal government which of course I know that the Delta state government has fully complied.
“As it is now the financial autonomy is already operational in Delta State but apart from the financial autonomy, they still believe that they have not been granted full autonomy in terms of other administrative things that needed to be carried out.
“But I believe also that by the ongoing constitutional alteration, those issues will come up and by the grace of God the National Assembly that are involved will do justice to that”, stating that they are not against the autonomy of the third tiers of government.
“The state government is not also against the autonomy. Once it is amended and the president gives assent to it, it becomes operational and the Delta state government is always prepared to key into that”, he added.
