Workers in the Abia State public service on Monday locked out the state Accountant General, Chief Gabriel Onyendilefu, over alleged non-payment of their three months salary and arrears of minimum wage.
The workers, under the auspices of the Nigeria Labour Congress, also protested against unpaid pensions, gratuities and non-remittance of union dues.
The lockout was led by the Chairmen of NLC and the Public Service Negotiating Council, Sylvanus Eyeh and Chris Okoro, respectively.
The workers also picketed all the offices in the Ministry of Finance and the Sub Treasury Department in Umuahia, the state capital.
They displayed placards, with different inscriptions, blocked the entrance gates to the accountant-general’s office and barred unsuspecting workers from gaining entrance into their offices.
Eyeh had told newsmen that the workers decided to picket the office “because of the non-payment of union dues to industrial unions for 2012 and 2013, and non-payment of other statutory payments”.
He said that the office also refused to pay the arrears of the minimum wage to parastatals, while the gratuity and pensions of retired workers were yet to be paid.
“So many workers are owed several months’ salaries, not less than three months each,” Eyeh said.
The state NLC chairman said that the Health Management Board workers were owed about six months’ salary arrears.
He said that teachers were also owed many months salary while the Abia State University Teaching Hospital, Aba, and workers at the Abia Transport Network Company were owed several months salaries.
Eyeh said that workers in the Project Implementation Unit and all the tertiary institutions in the state were also being owed salary arrears.
He also noted that “no local government is up to date in salary payment. No school is up to date in salary payment”.
He said that all the industrial unions in the state met on Thursday to take a decision on the issue, saying that the state chapter of the National Union of Local Government Employees was part of the action.
The NLC chairman alleged that the accountant-general “refused to honour all the approvals given to labour by Governor Theodore Orji, even after giving us more than 24 appointments.
“To worsen the situation, when workers contribute their dues for the upkeep of their unions, government takes the deductions from the workers’ salaries and keeps for themselves.
“Taking all these and many more into consideration, we say enough is enough, government should be told the language they will understand.”
Eyeh said that the gates to the office of the accountant-general would remain shut “until workers are paid all the money”.
In his remarks, the chairman of the Public Service Negotiating Council accused the accountant-general of being “insensitive to the plight of workers in the state.
“We are human beings; we are pressed to the wall.”
He said that workers in the state, who were due for the Confirmation and Promotion Examination, paid N2,000, but expressed regrets that they neither wrote the examination nor refunded.
The accountant-general and the Commissioner for Information and Strategy, Dr. Anthony Agbazuere, could not be reached for comments.