Kogi NLC threatens to strike over unpaid salaries

chika ebuzor

February 23, 2017 5:15 AM

The Kogi NLC chairman issued the threat at a press conference on Wednesday, February 22, 2017 in Lokoja.

Governor Yahaya Bello of Kogi state

The organised labour in Kogi state has threatened a warning strike after seven days if the government continued to owe workers their salaries.

Mr Onuh Edoka, state chairman of the Nigerian Labour Congress issued the threat at a press conference on Wednesday in Lokoja.

Edoka said labour would embark on a three-day warning strike at the expiration of the ultimatum as state workers have not been paid salaries in the past one year.

He also said that labour would thereafter proceed on an indefinite strike.

”We want to use this opportunity to call on the government to pay the dying workers of Kogi State who have not taken salary in the last one year.

”You will all agree with me that many workers of Kogi State have lost their lives in the one-year screening exercise being carried out under this administration.

”They lost their lives through accidents on the roads and kidnappers who kidnap them and most of them die in the hands of their abductors.

“It is no longer news that civil servants in Kogi are passing through terrible times,” he said.

Edoka said that the organised labour in the state comprising NLC, Trade Union Congress (TUC) and the Joint Public Service Negotiating Council (JNC) gave the state government eight months to address workers salaries issues but it failed.

He said that the anguish generated by the staff verification exercise which marked 365 days today (Wednesday) had lingered too long adding that the membership of the appeal committee currently in place did not give room for transparency.

”The window has been open for government for almost eight months to sit down on round table with the organised labour to sort out some of these issues,” he said.

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The labour leader stressed that 60 per cent of the members of the appeal and complaints committee of the government were members of the committee whose report was being challenged.

The NLC chairman said despite the continued assurances by the state governor, Alhaji Yahaya Bello, that no genuine worker would be shortchanged, events in the last one year pointed to the contrary.

chika ebuzor