WORKERS in Ekiti State, under the aegis of Ekiti State Organized Labour, yesterday, issued a 14-day ultimatum to Governor Ayo Fayose to pay all arrears of salaries and pensions of retirees.
This was as the Governor-elect of the state, Dr. Kayode Fayemi, has advised the outgoing governor to devote the June 2018 federal allocation of N5.52 billion to the payment of salaries and other entitlements of workers.
The workers urged Governor Fayose to clear all arrears of workers’ entitlements before a new government takes office on October 16.
The workers’ demands were contained in a bulletin issued in Ado-Ekiti and made available to newsmen.
The bulletin reads in part: “Workers in the public service of Ekiti State have been suffering over the years with nobody to rescue them in relation to the payment of salaries, pensions and other benefits.
“The import of this is that the condition of service of an average the worker in Ekiti is deplorable or poor despite the huge funds allocated to Ekiti State from Federation Account between 2014 to date.
“In view of the present development in the state occasioned by the result of the governorship election, it has become necessary to assess the implication on the welfare of workers vis-à-vis the arrears of unpaid salaries.
The state government is hereby given a 14-day ultimatum to meet these demands.”
Meanwhile, the governor-elect, Dr. Fayemi, in a statement by his media Director, Wole Olujobi, called on Governor Fayose to make accountability and human face critical factors in the policies of his administration.
Fayemi said: “Information available to us suggests that Fayose, at the weekend, called all the Directors in the state service to a meeting in the new Governor’s Lodge, pleading with them not to release sensitive information to the opposition, including non-disclosure of the state’s finances.
“But we want to say that the state has received N5.52 billion fresh June federal allocation and we demand that the money be spent to pay salary, and should not be subjected to the circus of lies and deceits that often accompanied the sharing of the allocations in the past, whereby local governments were given their shares in the morning and in the night they would be coerced to return the money to the governor’s office while local governments workers remained unpaid for nine months.”
