By M. Peter – Jos
The Plateau State government has reviewed downward the 2020 budget due to the negative impact of the COVID-19 disease saying the pandemic has caused a drop in internally generated revenue as well as allocation from the federal government.
The Commissioner for Information and Communication, Dan Manjang disclosed this at the end of an executive council meeting at Government House, Jos explaining that “the budget was formerly N177.3billion but was scaled down to N99,907billion to make it realistic.”
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The Commissioner for Budget and Economic Planning, Sylvester Wallangko, added that the revised budget was in compliance with the directive to ensure that a minimum of 10 per cent budget expenditure was COVID-19 related, stressing, “We have earmarked 10 per cent of our expenditure spread between the recurrent and capital expenditure on COVID-19 related issues which is N11.25billion.”
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Earlier, the State Commissioner for Health, Dr. Nimkong Lar noted that 57 health workers in the State were infected with the COVID-19 disease while undergoing their legitimate duties in various health centres as they were workers managing COVID-19 patients in primary health centres, hospitals and private clinics across the State.
“We have conducted 9,039 test, we have 7,324 results and 1,715 pending while 571 are confirmed cases, 132 are on admission in our four treatment centres, 260 discharged and have recorded 16 deaths,” he stated.
