Civil servants in Ogun State have expressed worry over the “uncertain future” that awaits them, following the non-remittance of 106 months of Contributory Pension by the Ibikunle Amosun administration.
Acting under the aegis of Joint National Public Service Negotiating Council (JNPSC), the workers sent a letter, dated December 5, to the governor on their plight.
They decried the unpaid four-year leave bonus, 10 months of unpaid Trade Union check-off due and gratuity payment suspended since January 2014.
In the letter, titled: Revisiting Our Plight: Unpaid Entitlements and Other Issues, was signed by its Secretary, Comrade Adebiyi Olusegun,
The workers also listed months of unpaid global deductions and outstanding promotion from 2016, 2017 and this year as arrears owed them by the state government.
They said the situation had left them at the “crossroads where capacity to absorb shocks and uncertainties any longer has been exhausted”.
According to them, the government breached an agreement on the last tranche of the Paris Club refund of N17.3 billion to the state for the payment of arrears of trade union check-off dues.
The letter said: “We must as well register our displeasure on the sort of maltreatment meted out to the Organised Labour over the last tranche of the Paris Club refund of N17.3 billion to the state, which from the outset, we collaborate with open conscience to have addressed a press conference hurriedly that the state government will commit over N10 billion of it to offering various outstanding due to state workers, inclusive of all arrears of Trade Union check-off dues as communicated to us by the Commissioner of Finance.
“We, therefore, take the outright neglect of Trade Union’s in eventual payment of some these arrears as betrayal of trust.”
The workers urged the government to address the issues they raised to avoid an industrial disharmony.
They called for an “immediate action at addressing these long-drawn issues would go some miles at dousing the tensed situation now at its ebbs which, as it were, might disrupt the relative industrial harmony currently being experienced in the state”.
Also, workers of Tai Solarin College of Education (TASCE), Omu-Ijebu, Ogun State, have urged President Muhammadu Buhari to order Amosun to pay them their salary arrears.
In a letter to the President by the Chairman of the school’s Coalition Staff Union, Mr. Daniel Aborisade, the workers said the state government was owing them N4 billion Consolidated Tertiary Institutions Salary and Consolidated University Academic Salary Structure arrears from July 2009 to last October.
Aborisade said the money is owed them by the former administration of Gbenga Daniel and his successor, Amosun.
The letter reads: “We were further subjected to frustration and untold hardship by the government due to the non-payment of salary for 14 consecutive months, making it difficult to feed ourselves, our immediate family and cope with the present economy imbalances.
“After much persuasion and appeals to the government, vis-a-vis the appointment of a new Provost for the college, the state government resumed the payment of half-salary with effect from August, 2016 to July 2017 and October 2017.
“Between August, 2017 and the time of writing this report, the percentage of the monthly salary paid to workers in the college has increased to 60 per cent (September 2017 to September 2018).
“Between May 2011 and October 2018, the college has lost 45 employees. Some of them died because of little medical expenses that could not be paid at hospital.”