Oyo State Workers Starts 3-Day Warning Strike

Public Servants in Oyo state have on Wednesday, started a three-day warning strike over unpaid salaries and withdrawal of promotion benefit by the state government.

Mr Waheed Olojede, the Chairman, Nigeria Labour Congress ( NLC ) in Oyo State said that the workers in the state started the three-day warning strike over a number of unresolved labour issues.

Olojede said that the state Public Service Joint Negotiating Council (PSJNC), including NLC and Trade Union Congress (TUC), had been on negotiation with the state government for the past three weeks over the issues.

He said that one of the issues was the technical withdrawal of promotion of workers earlier approved by Gov. Abiola Ajimobi, which was enjoyed for few months by the workers.

“The promotion of workers was approved by the governor in February 2018 of which implementation commenced in March 2018 and a good number of workers started enjoying it.

“To our surprise by September 2018, the promotion was technically withdrawn by the Oyo State government and this led to the setting up of the committee to meet the government to explain the reason for the withdrawal.

“Other issues are the varying degrees of outstanding salaries of workers under the local government and the primary school teachers who are yet to collect their December, 2018 salaries of which others have collected.

“In some local government workers are owed salaries between three to five months and this is why we said
government must do necessary things to ensure that workers are paid as at when due,’’ Olojede said.

The NLC chairman noted that these were the issues they put before the government and government had the responsibility to address all matters as they affected workers.