YENAGOA
Over 500 aggrieved local government workers in Bayelsa state on Monday shut down business centers in the state capital as they staged a peaceful protest following four months of unpaid salary arrears by the state government.
The workers said they are being owed four months salaries, from October 2015 to February 2016 which forced the workers to go on rampage.
The angry workers barricaded the entrance of the local government headquarters located very close to the state secretariat in Yenagoa, with placards, chanting anti-government songs, preventing vehicular movement and persons in and out of the premises.
The men and women wearing long faces said their salaries had not been paid for over four months even though they had been coming to work every day diligently, adding that they have suffered enough.
This is coming as workers in Sagbama, Nembe, Brass and other local government areas also shut down their local government headquarters over the same issue.
It was gathered that in Sagbama local government, the workers are being owed up to nine months salaries while in Nembe local government council, they are yet to be paid for up to ten months.
Some senior staff of some of the local governments who do not want their names in print attributed the problem to the 2015 general election and the recent governorship election in the state, where monies were allegedly deducted from local government allocations to fund some political activities.
Speaking with newsmen, chairman of the Nigeria Union of Local Government Employees, NULGE, Comrade Oyoro Kwaka, said the protest became the last resort after dialogue and communiqués sent to the Executive Chairman, Chubby Ben-Walson, failed to yield any positive results.
He said while the workers in the local government spent their Christmas and new year without salaries, the politicians working in the local government went home with their fat salaries and other incentives like Cow, goats and rice.
“We are here to protest over our unpaid salaries. Salaries have not been paid for four months and so we are asking the chairman to pay us our salaries. They owe us October, November, December and January. Our children are at home, they have been sent back home from school because we cannot pay their school fees.
” We did not have money for Christmas, for the first time in this local government, we could not afford to buy a grain of rice for Christmas but yet the politicians bought rice, cows, goats, wrappers and so many other things for themselves. Even now, the politicians have been paid up to date but they refuse to pay us our own stipends for over four months.”
He alleged that the local government chairman has been siphoning the monies being realized from Internally Generated Revenue, IGR, as monies collected go straight to his personal account, just as he challenged the chairman and the principal officers of the local government to come out and tell the workers what they have been doing with the allocations that accrued to the council.
Also speaking, Head of Local Government Administration, Ovienadu Torutein, admitted owing the workers but said it was not up to four months as the local government was yet to get January allocation.
“Yes, we are owing, some for three months, some for two months. The reason is that the allocation we receive from the federal is not enough and it affects not only this local government but others. We are even trying in meeting up with payment of salaries than other local governments areas.
On why the council prefers to pay the politicians while leaving the workers to suffer, he said, “We have the executive chairman who is the chief accounting officer and he decides in his wisdom to pay some categories of politicians.
“We have a salary wage bill of about 97 million or there abouts and if we add that of the politicians, it is about 108 million and we receive less than that. On the average, we are receiving between 70 to 80 million after the statutory deductions.”
