THE IMPACT OF IRREGULAR PAYMENT OF WORKERS SALARY ON PRODUCTIVITY IN IMO STATE

1.1 Introduction

The irregular payment of salaries and wages to employees in government ministries and parastatals has gained domestic attention in recent years. It would be impossible to go a month without the media covering the struggles that employees are dealing with due to unpaid salary, wage gratuities, or pensions. It will be under the federal ministry at one point and under the state ministries under the local government at another. Profit is the primary motivation of any business and is considered the goal it sets out to accomplish. Their mission statement or policy contains the stated or defined objectives. Management makes sure that all organisational activities and operations follow the established guidelines in order to meet the goal.

This chapter will address the background information that motivated this study, the challenges that prompted it, its aim, and its objectives as a preface to subsequent sections of the study. Additional factors include the study's significance, scope, limitations, research questions and hypotheses, and the definition of technical terms.

1.2 Background of Study

Individual are employed in every public sector institution to carryout various activities to achieve the institutions set goals and objectives. These public institutions are government own which are financed and managed with tax payers money. The individuals who work in these public institutions are referred to as civil servants or bureaucrats.

According to Ogunna (1999), civil workers are crucial to the state apparatus's operation and its foundational elements. He goes on to say that the civil services is a vast network of permanent government employees who are hired in their civil capacity by the civil service commission. These employees are tasked with carrying out the government's executive authority, and their actions are governed by a set of procedural rules that operate in a methodically interconnected manner in order to accomplish the intricate goals of their employers.

Like an every other government institution, civil servants who are recruited into the Owerri municipal council have at their disposal knowledge skills, attitude, experience and qualification in carrying out the activities of the government in order to meet with set goals of the government. The employer which is the government on the other hand have at its disposal the pay to attract it employee to work and become its members. This pay is otherwise the salaries paid to civil servants.

The fundamental purpose of this salary is to encourage these civil servants to provide high performance for the organizational effectiveness and efficiency to positively affect productivity. The development for salary assumes the availability of accurate job description. This job description includes job evaluation and salary survey. These are internally equitable and externally competitive. The salary to the civil servants is meant to serve as the way of acquiring the necessities, luxuries and all the need of the workers. It also makes the workers feels rather efforts have been acknowledged and may derive a sense of achievement from the job.

However, when a worker scarifies all his/her effort, knowledge, skill in-ensuring that there is a high productivity in an organization and having in mind that monthly entitlement (salary) will be given to him/her problem to take care of his/her problem but at the end, he/she get nothing. The workers is being demoralized to work or force to loose interest which in turn will affect productivity thereby resulting in low productivity. Furthermore, an effective salary policy provides guideline for compensating employees. It also addresses some issues service efficiency and effectiveness.

1.3 Statement of Problems

Investigation revealed that employees have a reputation for being ineffective, particularly when they are underpaid. As a result, the majority of government parastatals are seen as useless. How can employee performance and conduct be promoted is the question. A worker who is due money for several months is left with little choice but to find a way to support themselves, which may involve starting their own business. If salary arrears persist, it might lead to low productivity towards organisational objectives.

Irregular payment of workers salary has often been a controversial issue in the Owerri Municipal Council. Indeed success in labour compensation management efficiency. Irregular payment of workers salary may however result to the following enemies, to high productivity conflicts, industrial action, demonstration, laziness to work or even absenteeism to work.

1.4 Aim and Objectives of Study

The aim of the study is to examine the Impact of Irregular Payment of Workers Salary on Productivity in Imo State using Owerri Municipal as a case study. In achieving this aim, the following specific objectives were laid out as follows:

1. To encourage regular payment of workers salary in Owerri municipal council in other to encourage high performance;
2. To examine the level of effect or irregular payment of workers salary performance;
3. To find ways of solving the problems associated with irregular payment of workers salary in Owerri municipal council; and
4. To ascertain whether irregular payment of workers salary can attract potential skilled workers to the service of Owerri municipal council;

1.5 Research Questions

The study came up with research questions so as to be able to ascertain the above stated objectives. The specific research questions for the study are stated below as follows:

• Can irregular payment of workers salary attract potential skilled workers to the service of Owerri municipal council?
• In what way can the problems associated with irregular payment of workers salary be solved?
• How can regular payments of workers salary be encourages in Owerri municipal council?
• What is the level of effect on irregular payment of workers salary on productivity in Owerri municipal council Imo state?

1.6 Research Hypothesis

In order to pursue the objective of this study, the following generalized statements have been designed to guide and aids in obtaining the result for the experiment to be conducted. For this work, the null hypothesis will be represented with H0 while the alternative hypothesis will be represented with hypothesis H1.

Hypothesis One

• H0: Irregular payment of workers salary has no negative effect on productivity.
• H1: Irregular payment of workers' salary has negative effect on productivity.

Hypothesis Two

• H0: Remuneration of workers has no effect on their output.
• H1: Remuneration of workers has effect on their output.

1.7 Significance of Study

According to statistics, the state's over 60% of industrial action might be linked to worker unrest over irregular salary payments and demands for higher salary allowances. Industrial activities frequently cause paralysis in Owerri Municipality. The majority of industrial disputes in the government sector were brought on by irregular worker wage payments.

Positively, it is hoped that the vision of exposing the circumstances behind the irregular salary payments to employees in the Owerri Municipal Council would be warmly received and greatly helpful to other government agencies or parastatals in the state of Imo and throughout Nigeria.

Finally, researchers will greatly benefit from this study, and non-researchers might utilize it to further their own research endeavours. This work advances knowledge and may function as a model for future research.

1.8 Scope of Study

The scope of the research is focused on the Impact of Irregular Payment of Workers Salary on Productivity in Imo State using Owerri Municipal as a case study.

1.9 Limitations of the Study

During the course of this study, there were some problems encountered which stood as limitations to the research work. Some of the limitations include:

1. Time Constraint:The time frame given to accomplish this project was very short due to school academic calendar and it was carried out under pressure which made the researcher not to implement some necessary features.
2. Establishment Policies:Establishment policies posed a serious limitation as most staffs are not ready to release information needed for this research work. There were lots of information needed from the staffs of this establishment to enhance the study which took them time to release or they did not release at all for security purposes, hence the scope was reduced.
3. Research material: availability of research material is a major setback to the scope of the study.
4. Frequent power failure:This made the researcher append more money on fuel to ensure sustainable power.
5. Financial Constraint: Insufficient fund tends to impede the efficiency of the researcher in sourcing for the relevant materials, literature or information and in the process of data collection (internet, questionnaire and interview).
6. Initial Cooperation Delay from Respondents: A particular limitation of this work came as a result of the respondent refusal to offer their cooperation at the initial time they were contacted. This contributed in making the success of this research study difficult.

1.10 Definition of Terms

Salaries:

This is referred to as the monthly rate paid to clerical administration and professional employees.

Workers:

There are individuals who are hired or employed within the capacity of any institution or organization charge with responsibility of achieving the institutional set goals and whose activities are guided by certain rules of procedures.

Productivity:

This is measure of how resources are brought together in organizations and utilized for accomplishing a set of result (Anugwom 2007)

Technical Know-How:

This can be seen as the first potentials in which a worker exhibits and display in government parastatals or organization, that is to say that it is the best knowledge a worker offers to an organization in order to increase in output.