Kogi Govt Has Met Labour Demands – Civil Servants’ Group

A group of Kogi State Civill servants have accused the leadership of the organized Labour in the state of needlessly extending the industrial strike action embarked upon almost two weeks ago, in spite government meeting the terms of the agreement it had with them.

The group said this while addressing a media parley at the Nigeria Union of Journalists, NUJ, Press Centre, on Thursday, July 7th, 2016. The leader of the group, Comrade Cyril Ukwenya, said government has agreed that all workers on compulsory leave will be called back.

According to Cyril, dates and schedules of payments for all outstanding salaries and leave bonuses will be published. He also made known that government has resolved that no genuine worker will be played off as workers with complains about omissions will be attended to directly by the Office of the Governor.

“Salaries of LGA teachers and pensioners will be returned to SUBEB and the Bureau of Local government pensions,” he said.

He urge civil servants in the state to disregard labour leaders.

“During the last adminarration of Captain Wada, the Ministry of Science and Technology proposed to supply laptops to all the teachers in the State, so as to boost their teaching skills but the labour leaders getting to know about this, saw it as an opportunity to make money on all workers and eventually hijacked the idea by convincing governor who gave them approval to go ahead. These said laptops were given to workers at the rate more than 300% of the market price,” he disclosed.

He also disclosed that the union dues deducted from workers salaries to labour’s account every month is almost 50 million naira.

“The present labour leaders have been in office for about seven to eight years now. If we go by the above exposition, this means the union dues of workers deducted to labour is approximately 4.6 billion naira.

“Is there anything on ground to show for this 4.6 billion naira they have collected from the hungry and heavily indebted workers of Kogi State?

“It is an open secret that, every labour leader is richer than a serving commissioner.”

Speaking further, Ukwenya stated that the bailout fund is a loan facility sourced from Zenith Bank and Access bank, using the Central Bank of Nigeria as a guarantor of facility.

“Bailout fund is a loan facility sourced by Zenith and Access banks. It is not transferable and cannot yield interest as maliciously purported by the labour leaders. Money cannot be withdrawn from the holding banks for any other purpose other than crediting the salary accounts of workers,” he said.