Asana – Civil servants in Asaba, Delta state, have called on the three tiers of government to provide their workers with suitable accommodation to enhance their productivity and reduce the hardship faced by them. A cross section of the civil servants made the call on Wednesday in Asaba in separate interviews.
civil servants, who are confronted with the challenges of increasing cost of rent every year.
They insisted that investing in housing for civil servants would also help to reduce the stress which workers go through in saving thousands of naira to pay for rent each year.
Mr Kinsley Ewere, a public servant in one of the Federal agencies, urged the Federal Government to build housing units across the country to assist its workers.
Ewere said:“building housing units across the country will reduce the stress faced by civil servants, who pay hundreds of thousands of naira annually as rent. “It will also enable them save towards their retirement.
“With the huge amount of money civil servants pay annually for rent, there is no way they can conveniently plan for their retirement.
“In a place like Asaba, landlords are now making life difficult for civil servants with the exorbitant rent they charge.
‘’ Another civil servant, Mr James Edijana, appealed to state governments to look into the area of assisting civil servants develop their plots of lands with the provision of loans.
“With the present situation in the country, civil servants will find it very difficult to build their own house.
“But if the government can assist workers develop their plots of land, it will be a welcome development.
“Many civil servants in the state have been able to acquire land through cooperative loans.
“If the government can assist them in developing the land and deducting the money from their salaries on monthly basis, it will encourage more civil servants become proud owners of houses, “he said.
Mrs Bridget Oki, a civil servant, decried the situation whereby the few housing units build for civil servants could not be accessed by them due to high charges the government placed on the houses.
“In most cases, only the rich, who are mostly politicians, have access to government housing units, ’’she said.
Oki appealed to governments at all levels to assist workers with loans to build affordable houses.
He also appealed to banks to assist their customers by acquiring land and developing the piece of land they acquired.
In his submission, Mr James Monye of Monye and Associates, an Estate Manager, confirmed that rent had skyrocketed in Asaba in the last few months.
“As at January last year, you can still get a two-bedroom flat for N250,000 per annum, but today, such flats go for between N300,000 and N350,000.
He said that a three-bedroom flat goes for between N300,000 and N400,000 depending on the location.
He said that the rent of one room had also gone up from between N2,500 and N3,500 to between N4,000 and N5,000, while a bed sitter now goes for between N6,000 to N10,000 as against N7,000 and N8,000 depending on the location.
See: vanguard
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