50% salary: Kogi workers, government back to trenches

Different positions between Kogi State government and State NLC arising from 50% April, 2020 workers salaries are issues that would greet the workers May day celebration.

Kogi State government has informed the various Unions that 50% salaries would be paid as Apri, 2020 salaries, which was far above the percentage the State Governor , Yahaya Bello intended to pay earlier.

  
50% position of government was formally communicated to the various labour unions on Wednesday.

However, 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 their position to Government.

The workers have eagerly been expecting salary since the 27th of April in accordance with Governor Bello’s avowed second term stance on prompt payment of salaries to State workers.

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, to persuade them to accept less than the fifty percent salaries they have been taking in the last few months of Bello-led administration.

It was not clear if the reduction of workers’ salaries was ocassioned by the reduction in Federal allocation, but NULGE chairman in one of the Local government in Kogi Central confided in our reporter that there was no shortfall in the Federal allocation to States for April.