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Greed by state executives caused unpaid salaries, says NLC
The Kaduna State Chairman of Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Adamu Ango, has said the union will fight the neglect of workers’ welfare by state governors.
He said: “Nigerians will weep if we reveal all the things the government is doing to push the masses into deeper hardship and poverty.”
The labour leader spoke yesterday as a special guest of honour ahead of today’s Global Day for Decent Work, organised by members of the National Union of Textile and Garment Workers of Nigeria (NUTGTWN) in Kaduna.
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He said the state executives engage consultants to execute the jobs meant for government workers.
Ango also decried the minimum wage of N18,000 compared to the price of a bag of rice which is over N20,000. He said the workers are being subjected to employ corrupt means to augment their poor incomes.
The General Secretary, NUTGTWN, Issa Aremu urged trade unions to rise up and defend their members’ rights.
Meanwhile, the NLC has blamed greed and high cost of governance for the inability of state governors to pay their workers.
It also described as unacceptable a situation where 27 states are owing several months of salaries and arrears, threatening a showdown with the affected states.
NLC Deputy President, Peters Adeyemi spoke in Ado Ekiti yesterday after he led a delegation from the national secretariat to hold talks with labour unions in Ekiti State on the arrears of salaries owed workers and the pensions and gratuities of retirees.
He described the visit of the NLC chiefs to Ekiti as a “fact-finding” one, saying the delegation had discovered that the state government had paid workers’ salaries up to April, pensioners had been paid up to March while gratuities were last paid in 2012.
“Our leaders are too wasteful, they are very greedy and don’t even care that the nation is going through a period of economic recession. I don’t know why they cannot fly on commercial planes rather than cruising on presidential jets,” he said.
