Unpaid salaries: Assembly workers spoil for war

OWERRI—Imo State House of Assembly workers are currently fine-tuning arrangements to disrupt legislative activities when the lawmakers resume plenary next Tuesday, following what they called “the apparent unwillingness or inability of the state government to clear their arrears of salaries, since it received the Federal Government’s bailout fund.”

What infuriated the workers was the fact that two weeks after Governor Rochas Okorocha promised to clear the arrears of salaries owed Imo workers, they were still wallowing in penury, hunger and stress.

Feelers from the Assembly showed that the workers would, apart from locking the main gate of the Assembly complex against the lawmakers, would also take any other step open to labour, to achieve their collective aspiration.

Vanguard gathered that the workers, who are acting under the canopy of the Imo State Chapter of the Parliamentary Staff Association of Nigeria, PASSAN, had been at battle with government over their unpaid salaries and allowances.

Already, the body had given the Speaker and his principal officers 48 hours ultimatum, to ensure payment of their salaries, even as they insist on no pay, no work.

One of the aggrieved workers told Vanguard, yesterday, that they were not very pleased with the way government was treating their welfare.