Ayade begs labour over picketing of AG’s office

Cross River State Governor, Benedict Ayade, has appealed to organised labour to stop picketing the Accountant General’s (AG) office over unremitted deductions to labour.

Ayade made the appeal yesterday at Government House, Calabar and pleaded with labour leaders to allow him commence payment of the remittances with two months installment during the week.

Labour had blocked the entrance to the AG’s office as early as 6:00a.m. over deductions from workers’ salaries, which labour claimed was not remitted to the banks for those who borrowed money from banks and failure to remit money deducted for housing to mortgage banks.

The Accountant General, Joseph Adie, who addressed labour, promised to look into their case, saying, “Before the end of the day, something would be done about it.”

State Chairman of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Comrade Ben Ukpepi, said: “We arrived to discover that the AG did not do anything. So we are picketing his office and we will not listen to anybody until they meet our demands.”

But they later matched to Government House where Governor Ayade addressed the labour leaders.