Stop misinforming the public on retrenchment of 10,000 workers – - TopicsExpress

Stop misinforming the public on retrenchment of 10,000 workers – Ondo Workers’ Union tells Mimiko The aggrieved workers and their leaders are accusing the state Governor, Olusegun Mimiko of deliberately sacking their colleagues whom the government claimed were ghost workers. At a Press Conference today organized by leaders of the Nigeria Union Local Government Employees (NULGE), Joint Negotiation Council (JNC), Trade Union Congress (TUC), Nigeria Union of Teachers and Chaired by Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) State Chairman, Comrade Bosede Daramola particularly faulted a report credited to the State Commissioner for Information, Mr. Kayode Akinmade on the present state of local government in the State. On the said report, Akinmande was quoted to have said that the State government have been able to save N500million monthly following the verification exercise embarked upon by the government which led to the sack of those it tagged as ghost workers at the local government level. Also in the report, the Commissioner added that workers had been paid June and July salary. But, the NLC Chairman said the purported statement of Mimiko’s aide was deceitful, misinformed and an attempt to praise the state government. She pointed out that Workers at the local government were yet to receive their March salary, and no worker in the State has received salary for June and July. According to her, “After the verification exercise in the state service, including the local government, primary and secondary schools, to our dismay, only yesterday “The Government owned Newspaper” reported that Ondo State Government has raked a whooping sum of N500million monthly in respect to over 10,000 ghost workers in the state local government service. It is amazing that government spokesperson could say that we have 10,000 ghost workers in the local government service of Ondo State. “The report of a Committee set up by the Government and headed by Deji Falae which the Commissioner for Information made reference to, declared all workers employed between 2009 till date as ghost workers and 3,200 senior staff as also ghost workers, including the NULGE State Chairman and I said, as I speak today, all the senior workers tagged as ghost workers have been cleared, I still don’t know who is fooling who? “In the report, the government spokesperson said that the June and July salary have been paid, but as at today, salary of local government workers have not been paid. Cheque has not been written, not to talk of issuance of Cheque or paying to the accounts of the workers. I don’t know the magical hands the state government is using. “The over 6,500 workers tagged as ghost workers were officers recruited between 2009 till December, 2012 “If you read the press release of the Commissioner for Information, he said “You can imagine people collecting salary for workers in school that are not in existence at all, some staff have not been to their respective councils in the last four years”. My question is that if they are staff, can they be ghost? To my own understanding, ghost is invisible, they are not human beings, so if there are sharp practices anywhere, it is quite different from saying that they are ghost workers. “As I speak with you today, not a single letter of either retirement or termination of appointment has been issued to any of these workers. But their names have been removed from the vouchers. Like I said, over 3,000 senior workers have been cleared and the rest fall under the categories either retirement, or death. Prior to this exercise, monthly wages of local government workers amounted to N1.3billion and government can not tell us that it has saved N500million. Also speaking, the TUC Chairman, Sola Ekundayo maintained that the result of the verification proved that there are no ghost workers in the state, stressing that what they have is mere deletion of workers name from the payment vouchers. His words “the workers appointed in 2009 have been deleted from payment vouchers for no just cause. We are not afraid or against verification exercise. Though, before the exercis,e the government told us that there were ghost workers in Ondo State, but we argued with them and later gave them the chance to conduct the exercise. After the exercise, instead of ghost workers, we discovered that there were massive deletion of workers’ names from the vouchers with the excuse that most of them were employed illegally. “If the workers were employed illegally, who is to be blame or ask such question? It is the government, because it’s the one that issued the appointment letters. It should have asked its political appointees. Up till now, the government is claiming that its has not received the report on the verification, yet, how come they have come to the conclusion of 10,000 ghost workers. We are challenging the government to bring out this report”