*.Protest, strike in Lagos, Ebonyi, Osun, others
After several warning strikes without positive response from their employers, civil servants across the states of the federation have embarked on indefinite strikes or taken to the streets to press for the payment of their salary arrears.
While some of the states have adopted subtle messures to persuade their employees not to down tools, others are leaking the wounds of the industrial action embarked upon by the workers.
In Nasarawa State, the Umaru Tanko Al-Makura administration, yesterday begged the civil servants to show understanding over the delay in the payment of their February salary.
The state government said it was doing everything possible to commence the payment without further delay.
Commissioner for Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs, Musa Dan'azumi, told newsmen in Lafia, the state capital that the delay in the payment of February salaries was due to the shortfall in federal allocation to the state.
He revealed that the state government will obtain an overdraft to ensure that all categories of local government workers were paid before the end of the week.
The commissioner explained that the measure was sequel to an approval by Governor Al-Makura, following an enlarged Joint Account Committee which had earlier been given the mandate to source for overdraft to augment the shortfall in the federal allocation.
According to him, his ministry would strive towards fulfilling the conditions for obtaining the overdraft to ensure that all categories of workers in the local governments were paid.
He appealed to people of the state to persevere in the face of the present economic hardship in the state, even as he reiterated that government will live up to its responsibility and would not yield to mischief and distraction of rumour peddlers and political jobbers.
The situation is however different in Ebonyi State where the workers have begun an indefinite strike over the non-implementation of the N18,000 minimum wage and their September 2011 salary by the State government.
In a statement signed by the Chairman, Joint Public Service Negotiating Council, Comrade Ikechukwu Nwafor, after the union's meeting, it accused the government of unwillingness to meet its demands.
"Following Ebonyi State Government's unwillingness to meet up with the demands of the organised labour with respect to the implementation of the Report of the Committee on Ebonyi State Civil/Public Service Salary Structure and September 2011 withheld salaries, the organised labour in Ebonyi State hereby declares an indefinite strike effective from Tuesday 10th March, 2015 (yesterday).
"Accordingly, all civil/public service workers in Ebonyi State employment, local government employees and teachers, are directed to proceed on indefinite strike until government meets our demands.
"Consequently, workers are mandated to stay in their homes and await further directives from the leadership of organised labour in Ebonyi State," he said.
In their hundreds, Osun State civil servants led by the Chairman, Senior Staff Association, Comrade Olatunji Akinyemi, staged mass protest yesterday to demand for payment of their five-month salary arrears by Governor Rauf Aregbesola.
The aggrieved workers, who carried placards with inscriptions such as "Aregbesola Should Pay Our Backlog Of Salaries; Aregbesola Must Go; Aregbesola Is Not Workers Friendly; Give Us Our Money As We Are Suffering In Silence" and "Enough Is Enough For Osun Government," said they are tired of being maltreated by the state government.
In an interview with Nigerian Pilot, Akinyemi said they were pushed to the wall by the state government as his members were facing untold hardship since last year.
According to him, "one of the workers died about two weeks ago because he could not afford to buy just an inhaler, this is a pathetic situation that we are facing here in Osun. There was no concern from the government over the deceased; rather, they are threatening us with suspension letters."
Chief of Staff to the Governor, Alhaji Gboyega Oyetola, condemned the protest, saying that "they don't need to do this because the governor has signed the remaining salary arrears owed the entire workers in the state."
Oyetola, however, debunked claims by the workers that government owed them five months' salaries.
He said: "As at present, we have paid up to January this year and on or before the end of the week, the arrears would definitely be paid, so, we are not sitting down here doing nothing as we know their (workers') plight."
Meanwhile, doctors in the employ of the Lagos State government have threatened to embark on an indefinite strike on Monday over the non-payment of their May 2012 as well as August/September 2014 salaries.
In a statement signed yesterday by Chairman of the Medical Guild, Dr. Biyi Kufo, he said the industrial action was prompted by the state government's withholding of their May 2012 and August/September 2014 salaries.
Kufo said the doctors had embarked on a three-day warning strike in February to protest the non-payment of their wages, adding that, "We are bewildered that the administration ignored all our efforts to resolve the matter without a strike, and only invited us to talk when we threatened a strike.
"There has been little in terms of a positive response from the administration since the warning strike was concluded.
"Since resolution was not achieved at the end of this period, members of the guild should proceed on an indefinite strike from Monday, March 16, 2015. However, emergency services will be provided in all the hospitals during the action," Kufo said.
He explained that the doctors' salaries were withheld under the "no work, no pay" policy of the state government after it joined its parent body, the Nigerian Medical Association, NMA, on a nationwide strike last July to protest issues of relativity and other federal appointments in the health sector.
15 Kogi LGs can't pay salaries – Commissioner
For local government workers in Kogi State, hard times await them as the Commissioner for Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs, Sadiq Ainoko, has said that only 6 of the 21 Councils in the State can pay between 50 percent and 60 percent of the monthly salaries of their workforce for the month of January.
He said the rest 15 councils will only be able to pay between 30 percent and 40 percent to their workers for January. He disclosed this in a meeting with critical stakeholders in the councils in Lokoja, the state capital.
Ainoko told them that the situation was caused by drastic reduction in the allocation accruing to the councils for January 2015.
According to him, a drop of N416million was recorded in the monthly allocation to the councils in the state, saying that the global fall in oil price occasioned the decline.
Comrade Tom Abutu, the Nigeria Union of Local Government Employees, NULGE Chairman, wondered why the staffers at councils were made to earn percentage payments as against other workers in the state.
He appealed for the immediate intervention of the federal and state governments so that council administration would survive in the country.
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