Ebonyi, Labour Disagree Over Workers’ Salaries

Governor Willie Obiano of Anambra State (8th right),with members of NIA, Anambra State chapter, during their visit to the Governor in Awka, recently.

The Ebonyi State Gov
ernment and organised labour unions in the state have disagreed over the payment of salaries at a stakeholders’ forum convened by Governor Dave Umahi.
During the forum, the workers openly rejected with shouts of ‘no-oo- oo’ to the governor’s numerous suggestions and pleas for them to accept the old structure being paid to them before his predecessor effected a 50 per cent salary increase.
Umahi explained that the government remained committed to paying workers the full minimum wage salary structure.
He, however, urged the workers to accept a salary cut back due to the state’s poor financial predicament.
“The price of oil fell drastically over the preceding periods and Ebonyi always collects the least allocation from the federal allocation that accrued from the oil revenue.
“The last administration increased the state workers’ salary three months to its departure and we consider such move to be ‘politically motivated,’ he said.
The governor remarked that it was the same financial situation that made the government not to appoint caretaker chairmen and development coordinators at local government areas.
Umahi noted that for the state civil servants, the government had studied the salary structure of workers in other South-East states and discovered that labour’s new demand was ‘strange’.
In his remarks, the state’s Chairman of the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC), Mr Ikechukwu Nwafor, said that though the workers were ready to make sacrifices, it still insists on the payment of the existing 50 per cent pay rise.
Also contributing, the State Chairman of the Trade Union Congress (TUC), Mr Elias Oduma, said that the workers would resist any attempt by the government to cut their salaries because it was the same state government that paid the salary in the first place.
The former governor of the state and a serving senator, Dr Sam Egwu, who intervened in the impasse, urged both sides to review the development and bring out modalities that would ensure an equitable compromise.