The United Labour Congress (ULC) has warned Governor Yahaya Bello of Kogi state to stop politicizing the payment of salaries to workers, lamenting that “almost eighty per cent of our workers in Kogi State have not collected their salaries between between 4 and 20 months under the present administration.
Kogi State Chairman of ULC, Comrade Simeon Opaluwa, in a statement on Friday, decried the lackadaisical attitude of the Kogi state government in handling issues of workers’ salaries and pensions, stressing that many workers have not been paid for several months.
Opaluwa maintained that the current predicament of workers and pensioners in the state has caused untold hardship, warning that the ULC will no longer tolerate government’s insensitivity to workers’ welfare.
According to him, “Workers in the state are passing through unbearable hardship under this government. it is criminal by this government having collected resources accrued the state for all the months the workers are been owed.”
The labour movement in the state further lambasted the government for accusing the previous administration in the state as having plunged the state into debt as reason for the inability of the current administration to meet up with its obligation of paying salary and pensions.
He urged the Bello government in the state to play its part in the payment of salaries rather than engaging in buck-passing, an action ULC described as unnecessary.
The Labour union hinted that it would soon mobilize workers against the state government if the current situation is not quickly addressed.
