Ekiti State Governor, Mr Ayo Fayose, has charged directors of finance and revenue officers in Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) of the state government to block all leakages and be innovative and double the state’s internally-generated revenue within the next six months.
He gave the charge in Ado-Ekiti during an interactive session he held with them at the Governor’s Office.
A statement by the governor’s Chief Press Secretary, Idowu Adelusi, yesterday quoted the governor as saying that a new tax order was in the offing in the state, and warned tax and levy assessors against undermining government’s efforts.
Any government official involved in fraudulent act, the governor added, would be severely dealt with.
“A new tax order in Ekiti State in the offing, this job is about you and I and we have no other place to call our own. We depend on taxes to survive and we depend on you. Let people go and pay to the bank and any indicted state worker will be appropriately sanctioned.
“I will give the political will and I expect you to give the professional will for us to succeed. We hope to double our IGR in six months. We must devise strategy on revenue generation and do it with sense. The state will employ Spread Cost strategy so that the impact of any levy will not be hard on the payer and the public at large,” he stressed.
Fayose said a task force would be set up on revenue generation and that it would have some civil servants as members for them to be able to make their contributions.
He warned private school owners and business operators to desist from cheating the government by refusing to pay their dues and levies, warning that such business premises would be shut down.
In his remarks, the Head of Service, Dr Gbenga Faseluka, commended the governor for the interface with the workers, and described the meeting as a wakeup call for civil servants to go back to the basics.
He said the workers would be proactive and fine tune the system, adding that the current economic realities demanded that the state should look inward to generate more revenue.
Workers from different MDAs later suggested ways by which government could earn more income.