No CONJUSS, no work, Anambra Judiciary workers insist

Judiciary workers in Anambra State insisted, yesterday, that they would not return to work until the state government implements the Consolidated Judiciary Staff Salary Structure, CONJUSS.
The workers have been on strike for the past two months, a development that had crippled activities in the judiciary.
At a well attended rally at the judiciary headquarters in Awka, the judiciary workers, who came from all the 21 local government areas of the state, said the condition given by the state government that it would implement the new salary structure when its Internally Generated Revenue, IGR, improved, was unacceptable to them.
Anambra State chairman of the Judiciary Staff Union of Nigeria, JUSUN, Mr. Mark Ifezue described as unfortunate, a situation whereby the state government attached the implementation of the salary structure to improvement of IGR, arguing that the state IGR had more than doubled in the last one year.
Ifezue said that rather than keeping the workers in suspense, government should make it clear what it wants to pay, recalling that the state government promised earlier that it would review their salary once the IGR improved.
According to him, IGR had improved and government was still tying the welfare of the workers to further improvement.
Some of the workers, who spoke at the meeting, said: “We are demanding our right and we are not concerned about IGR and its improvement. Anybody linking the implementation of CONJUSS with IGR, is insulting us.”
“Many of our colleagues who retired from the service have become beggars in their villages because their entitlements have not been paid. We do not understand why Anambra State judiciary should be different from that of other states.”
Vanguard recalls that the state government on July 12, 2011 entered into an agreement with the state branch of JUSUN over non implementation of CONJUSS. In that agreement, JUSUN accepted what the state government offered to pay based on the promise that it would implement full CONJUSS when its economy improved.
However, the workers argued yesterday that the state’s monthly IGR has increased from about N500 million to N1.3 billion and wondered why the state government was still dragging its feet on the matter.