House speaker begs workers to suspend strike

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February 3, 2016 2:04 PM

The Speaker, Nasarawa State House of Assembly, Ibrahim Balarabe, has appealed to Organised Labour in the state to suspend the on-going strike.

House speaker begs workers to suspend strike in Nasarawa

The Speaker, Nasarawa State House of Assembly,

Balarabe in a statement signed by his Press Secretary, Jibrin Gwamna, said dialogue is the only way their differences would be addressed.

He said Nasarawa was already facing serious economic challenge adding that the only way they could move the state forward is collaboration.

The Speaker said the House of Assembly is deliberating on the strike action with a possible way of ending it. Pulse gathered that the strike has paralyzed government activities in Lafia, the seat of power and other local governments. Reports say ministries and other government offices are still under lock and keys as workers deserted their places of work to enforce the strike.

Commissioners, permanent secretaries and management staff were prevented from gaining access into their offices. At Nasarawa hospitals, patients are seeing leaving their sick beds for lack of medical attention.

Doctors and Nurses have also joined the ongoing strike, it was gathered. Organized Labour had last week gave the Nasarawa state government seven-day ultimatum to address all issues raised in their correspondences failure to which they would embark on strike.

The union is demanding immediate release of salary voucher for the month of January, 2016 and payment of salaries to workers, payment of annual increment from 2011 to date, payment of backlog of gratuities and arrears of pensions to retired workers of the state and local governments.

They are also demanding the immediate release of bio -metric /data captured exercise in both state and local governments, implementation of corrected CONMESS for Doctors, as well as the stoppage of salary payment in percentage of local government workers among other things.

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