KUNLE OLUTAYO
ABUJA, Nigeria – The Trade Union Congress (TUC), has frowned over the Federal Government’s alleged non-payment of the N35,000 wage award being paid to workers.
TUC President, Festus Osifo, made this known on Tuesday, while briefing journalists after the Congress’ emergency National Executive Council (NEC), meeting in Abuja.
Recall that the Federal Government, in a bid to avert a nationwide strike, had agreed to pay workers N35,000 wage allowances to alleviate hardship being experienced by them as a result of the subsidy removal policy.
Osifo specifically accused the Federal Government of reneging on their collective agreement when they met at the Presidential Villa to avert the nationwide strike they had initially planned to undertake.
According to TUC, it had it in good authority that workers had only received the one month meant for September and that only a few workers had been paid for the second time.
Osifo further threatened that the union might not be able to guarantee industrial peace if the issue is not being addressed timely.
“Specifically, on the issue of a wage award, it is on record that a payment has been made just once. As we speak now, our members in the federal civil service have not received the wage award since October.
“We wish to call on government to fast track all the processes. We learned that they are currently putting some things in place to pay this money, but our people are not ready to listen to excuses.
“All we want is that this money should keep hitting the account of our members until the new minimum wage is put in place.
“We thank them for the once that they have done, but they have ceased doing it for a couple of months, so we call on government to remove all the bottlenecks that are being experienced today regarding the wage award and to continuously pay this sum.
“I will also wish to call out the respective state government to do the same. For the state governments that have agreed to pay the 35,000 Naira wage award, we say kudos to them.
“For those who have also agreed to do something close to 35,000 we say we are welcoming that but for all those who are running away from paying these amounts or from providing any palliative to our members, they are only postponing the evil days because when the people are hungry, then at the end of the day, it increased the level of crime in society because people will keep looking for what’s to eat.
“So we call on all state governments, including the Minister of FCT, to make provision of this sort for all Nigeria workers.
“Similarly, we also encourage aII those in the private sector to follow suit to provide succour to the people that are laying the golden eggs.” Osifo said
Reacting to the huge debt owed, the Congress called on government all levels to as a matter of urgency take steps to address the economic challenges.
“As we have constantly stated, we are sceptical and worried by these states of our debt because our debt is continuously increasing. And this has put a huge burden on us.
“This year’s budget is also a deficit budget and is the level of borrowing is growing on a daily basis and the amount of money we require to keep servicing this debt is growing on a daily basis in such a way that the amount of money we require to service debt is almost catching up with our national revenue, and this is problematic.
“While we are always told that the debt to GDP ratio is quite accommodating. Yes, that is true, but the debt to revenue is worrisome.
“I want the government to look into this as soon and as fast as possible. I also want to draw the attention of the government to the hardship in the land. We want the government at all levels to tighten their belts because the situation where they’re asking Nigerians to keep tightening their belts, and they are living in affluence. This, for us, is not acceptable.” He said.
