Enugu State Governor, Peter Mbah, has said that this year’s budget of N521.6 billion will be financed through internally generated revenue.

Mr Mbah also gave assurance that the budget would be implemented to the letter to address the lingering poverty and hardship occasioned by the subsidy removal.

He further said that the government would review workers’ welfare and purchasing power and called on them to be ready to put in their best.

He said this at a mass organised at the Government House Chapel, Enugu, to mark the resumption of work in the New Year and pray for God’s blessings upon the state in the new year.

Mr Mbah, who said that only about 12 per cent of the ₦521.6 billion budget would be funded through borrowing, appealed to the people for more support through tax payment and protection of public assets.

He stated, “Now that we have this ambitious budget, which we are committed to implementing to the fullest, it is also for our people to continue to support the government. We must make sure that we protect the government’s assets. They are our assets.

“We should not vandalise or steal government’s assets because you would only be cutting your nose to spite your face when you do so as they belong to the people of Enugu State. We also encourage our people to pay their taxes and they will see what the tax money they pay is used for.

“A lot of this spending is going to come from mobilising domestic revenue. We do not intend to borrow much. In fact, we are only borrowing less than 13 per cent of the total budget size.’’

He also said that the sort of spending by the government would be capable of tackling unemployment.

“We are also going to deal with a lot of things as I have just mentioned, with more funds available to our civil servants and indeed to the entire people of Enugu State,” he said.

He affirmed that his administration would tackle the dearth of infrastructure, provide a quality and affordable education system through the construction of 260 smart schools.

He said that the ongoing construction of 260 type-2 primary healthcare centres across the state would help to ensure a healthy population of workforce for the much expected investment.

“From the over ₦414 billion capital expenditure, we are doing a number of radical things that we believe will impact the wellbeing and lives of the civil servants. We are going to be building 260 smart schools.

“What that translates to is that civil servants will no longer have a need to look for money to send their children to private schools. Each smart school also comes with teachers’ quarters. What that means is that the teachers will no longer have to bother about transportation or accommodation because these are all embedded in the smart schools that we are developing. In our mass housing effort, we plan to do 20,000 units in this same year’s budget,” the governor said. (NAN)