The Joint Negotiating Committee (JNC) and Trade Union Congress (TUC) in Ogun has called on Gov. Dapo Abiodun to release the agreed N1.5 billion first tranch for the payment of 21 months salary deductions of workers in the state.
The Chairman of the state JNC, Isa Olude and his TUC counterpart, Akeem Lasisi spoke at the annual general meeting of the Association of Retired Heads of Service and Permanent Secretaries held in Abeokuta.
The unions lamented that the government was yet to implement the agreement contained in the Memorandum of Action (MoA) signed with the organised labour which necessitated the suspension of their strike in July.
Workers in the state had embarked on an indefinite strike over the government’s refusal to pay their 21 months salary deductions and other entitlements
Olude said it was regrettable that, the government had failed to show commitment to implementing the agreements in the MoA three months after.
He said: “backlog of statutory leave allowance, failing contributory pension scheme, months of unremitted deductions, among others constitute the bane of job satisfaction in the service.”
On his part, the chairman of TUC called on the senior citizens to intervene in the crisis between the civil servants and the state government.
He said : “We signed a Memorandum of Action (MoA) on July 1. I can inform you that government has already commenced the payment of gross salary from July, but we still have grievances with the state government.
“We continue to receive inundated comments from our members across the state, just only because in the MoA, it was clearly stated that the government will release N1.5billion before the end of july.
“But, July has gone, August has gone, September has gone and October is about to end, I want to plead with you to help intervene in this because our members are alleging us that we are colluding with government to cut short their expectations.”
Abiodun while responding to the workers , assured that his administration would not renege on the agreements in the MoA, but pleaded with the workers to be patient.
The governor, represented by his Deputy, Mrs. Noimot Salako-Oyedele disclosed that his administration had paid over N70billion as gratuity and pension to retirees in the last three and a half years.
