From Noah Ocheni, Lokoja
While government at all levels in Nigeria are battling to salvage it’s citizenry from the current CoronaVirus pandemic in the country, Kogi workers are now battling with Governor Yahaya Bello’s government over the planned 50 percent salary pay cut in the state.
It all started as a rumour that Kogi State Workers would earn only 50% of their take home salaries in April 2020, but it however, came face to face with reality yesterday as the news hit the workers like a thunderbolt of the concluded plan of the government to cut workers salary by 50 percent when representatives of the various Unions met at a meeting of the Organised labour in Lokoja.
The Authority gathered that Kogi Council of NLC yesterday briefed their members of the plan, and asked the various Union Executives to gather the mindset of their members for further action by the Nigerian Labour Congress.
When news filtered out of the outcome of the NLC meeting, the workers wondered why the reason for half salaries when the allocation that was shared and accrued to the state in March, was unlike before, but an improvement.
However, the workers have recoiled into their shell at the various union to determine their next fate and present there position to Government. Feelers point to an outright rejection of the salary by the workers.
Civil servants who have been vigourously expecting salary alert since 27th of April 2020, are now more than ever before dampened by the outcome arising from the yesterday’s meeting of the labour union.
Some workers across various union bodies who spoke to The Authority, however, vowed to resist the planned payment of half salaries, describing it as wicked and inhuman in this period of Covid-19, a pandemic that has further increased prices of goods and services, while Parents are forced to feed many more mouths in this period of stay at home.
Meanwhile, the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) is enthusiastically waiting for feedbacks from the various union Executives to enable it take its decision.
It will be recalled that there has been attempt to meet the various Local Government union of NULGE by officials of Government, begging them to accept less than the fifty percent salaries they have been taking in the last few months of the changed A.P.C government of Governor Yahaya Bello.
