Civil servants in Ogun State have expressed worry over the “uncertain future” that await them following the non-remittance of 106 months of Contributory Pension by Governor Ibikunle Amosun – led government.
Acting under the aegis of the Joint National Public Service Negotiating Council (JNPSC), the workers in a letter dated 5th December and addressed to Governor Amosun, lamented the unpaid four years 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” signed by its Secretary, Comrade Adebiyi Olusegun, the workers also listed months of unpaid global deductions and outstanding promotion from 2016, 2017 and 2018 as arrears owed them by the state government.
The workers said the situation has left them at the “crossroads where capacity to absorb shocks and uncertainties any longer has been exhausted.”
The Council noted with dismay the alleged breach of agreement on the part of government as regards the last tranche of the Paris Club refund of N17. 3bn to the State on payment of arrears of Trade Union Check Off-Dues.
“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. 3bn 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 a total of over N10bn 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 Honourable 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 letter read.
The Council urged the state government to address all these issue so as to avoid any form on industrial disharmony.
They therefore 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.”
