Kogi State government workers are warming up against rumoured plans to pay them fifty percent salary for April.
It all started as a rumour that civil servants in Kogi State would earn only 50% of their take home salaries in April 2020, but the representatives of the various workers union came face to face with reality when they were formally informed of government’s intention to pay 50% at a meeting of the organised labour today in Lokoja on Wednesday.
The meeting resolved that each affiliate union should go and brief their members of the plan, and take their reactions. They are to report back to the larger house in their next meeting.
When news filtered out of the NLC meeting, the workers wondered about the reason for half salaries when the allocation that was shared and accrued to the state in March, was in full and in fact an improvement on previous months.
For now the workers are recoiling into their shell at the various union to determine their next fate and present there position to Government.
The workers have eagerly been expecting salary since the 27th of April in accordance with Governor Bello’s famed second term vow to pay salaries on that date.
A cross section of workers who spoke with our reporter, 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 chapters 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 Bello-led administration.
