A customer taking a nap at a filling station in Benin City after waiting for so long to buy fuel last Sunday
The organised labour in
Bayelsa has suspended its proposed strike to honour the founder of the Niger Delta University (NDU), late Chief DSP Alamieyeseigha.
The labour leaders said in a communiqué in Bayelsa State that they had resolved to postpone the strike to demand for salaries owed the university workers by the state government.
The communiqué issued and signed by the Chairman of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Dr Stanley Ogoun, said the workers were making the sacrifice to honour the first visitor to the university.
It said that both the academic and non-academic unions agreed that the non-payment of their salaries had made life unbearable but pledged to stay action on the planned strike until Alamieyeseigha’s burial on April 9.
It said that the unions would converge at their various levels for an appropriate response after the burial.
It decried the insensitivity of the state government to the plight of the university workers.
“It is inhuman to expect our members to exercise further patience when three months into the year, salaries have not been paid.
“The development has resulted in families of our members going hungry, our children being driven out of school in the last term, the sick uncared for and eviction by landlords due to expiration of house rents.
“Also, there is increased rate of hypertension and related diseases arising from members’ inability to provide food on the table and worsened by no means of credit facilities,” the communiqué read.
It said that though the unions were in support of the state government’s staff verification as a means of exterminating payroll fraud in the system, they, however, faulted its timing.
The communiqué said that the workers argued that the timing was a calculated attempt to further worsen their already critical state.
It said their fears arose from the fact that previous verification set up four years ago failed to achieve any meaningful result.
It said they had called on the state government to immediately pay their three months salaries on the basis of the bank verification numbers they had earlier submitted, while the current verification continued.
