Sacked LG Workers Drag Kogi Govt Before Ombudsman

202
Spread the love

The 447 sacked Olamaboro local government workers have dragged the Kogi State government before the Public Complaints Commission over its refusal to obey a high court judgment ordering it to pay their over five years salaries.

The workers alleged they were illegally laid off work.

The workers, who were legitimate staff of the Local Government Education Authority, were laid off in September 2010 under the administration of Ibrahim Idris for no justifiable reason.

The former Commissioner for Education, Chief Sylvester Onoja, said to have set up the committee that retrenched the staff, allegedly carried out the exercise indiscriminately without resorting to the State Universal Basic Education Board, SUBEB, which is the supervisory parastatal.

This was contained in a petition written to the complaints commission. It stated that the affected workers were indiscriminately relieved of their employment without any official letter, as the workers most of who had spent over 20 years in service, merely saw their names on the local government notice board telling them their services were no longer needed.

Apparently disturbed by this ugly development, the affected workers then headed to an Okpo High court which gave judgment on June 7, 2011 in favour of the workers, directing the state government to pay the salaries of the affected workers as they remained bona fide staff of the state government

However, the state government did not obey the order nor make any effort to appeal the judgment.

Following disobedience to the court order, the same High Court it was learnt issued an order of enforcement on February 28, 2012 compelling the state government to obey its judgment which the government again refused to do.

The workers then took their case to the state House of Assembly without recording any success, and thereafter petitioned the Public Complaints Commission to look into their plight.

When the case came up for hearing yesterday, no government official invited over the case turned up except one from SUBEB who agreed that the staff were sacked unjustly, but said it was only the state government that could give directive to pay the affected staff.

Narrating their ordeal, the affected workers said over 15 of their members had lost their lives due to lack occasioned by nonpayment of their salaries, with many of them suffering one ailment or the other with many of their children having also dropped out of school.

They, however, appealed to the state governor to quickly come to their aid by obeying the court judgment and pay their salary arrears, to check their needless suffering and deaths.

Source


Spread the love



Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *