Following the expiration of the 48-hour-ultimatum issued to
Governor Ayodele Fayose to pay workers’
salary deductions for December 2015, the organised labour in Ekiti State on
Thursday began an indefinite strike to protest the nonpayment of the
outstanding five months’ salaries of public workers in the state.
The workers’ demands also include the release of the staff
audit and verification conducted in April, 2015, disclosure of the state
monthly internally generated revenue, payment of arrears of five months’
salaries, pension and gratuities, payment of the September 2014 salary to
primary school teachers and payment of the 2014 and 2015 leave bonuses.
Others include implementation of promotion for 2013, 2014
and 2015, approval of inter-cadre transfer, remission of 10 per cent IGR to the
local government councils and the stoppage of the Joint Allocation Committee’s
account, resuscitation of Local Government Staff Pension Fund and release of
running grants.
Meanwhile, Ekiti state Governor Ayo Fayose in a state
broadcast on Thursday said he had no immediate solution to the demand of the
workers because of the financial challenges facing the state.
“Right now, I’m helpless. It is difficult to sell myself, my
family or my property. I can only depend on what I get from Abuja. I want
workers to understand that it is my priority to make them comfortable.
“Even before going on their strike, I got to know that many
of them no longer come to office while many others were coming late to the
office. Why I refused to come hard on those involved was that I had no moral
justification to do so since I knew we were owing them.
“I don’t have powers to prevent them from going on strike,
we shall be waiting till when they come back. But they must realise that strike
is not the best option.
“Even in Government House, we don’t have money to power
generators with diesel, whereas, I cannot sell myself or members of my family
to raise funds, things are that difficult,” Fayose said.
The Governor added; “the workers’ monthly wage bill was over
N2bn whereas federal allocation kept reducing from almost N3bn to as low as
N751m in April.”
No comments:
Post a Comment