By Victor Ahiuma-Young

KADUNA—Organised labour has praised state governors that promptly pay salaries and pensions, even as it charged defaulting governors to end the crisis of workers’ compensation in their respective states.

Speaking through the General Secretary, National Union of Textile, Garment and Tailoring Workers of Nigeria, NUTGTWN, Mr. Issa Aremu, labour commended the renewed energy of Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, leadership to ensure public employees in states were paid as at when due.

Issa-Aremu

He lauded the joint NLC and Trade Union Congress, TUC, 30-day ultimatum issued to Kogi State government to pay the seven-month outstanding workers salaries or face protests.

He equally urged government ministries at federal and state levels to remit contributory pensions of their workers to Pension Fund Administrators, PFAs.

Aremu singled out governors Akinwunmi Ambode of Lagos State, Adams Oshiomhole of Edo State, Alhaji Abdulfatai Ahmed of Kwara State and Mallam Nasir el-Rufai of Kaduna State as “labour-friendly” state governors that paid salaries, pensions, promotion increments and yearly increments of their civil servants.

According to him, “the greatest assets of states are their employees,” adding that governors could only demand for discipline and improved productivity from their employees if their workforce were well motivated.

He contended that nothing, including declining oil revenue, could justify delayed or non-payment of workers’ salaries saying “payments of salaries and pension are legitimate entitlements and mark of corporate responsibility of any employer.”

Governors should reorder their resources in such a way that labour is seen as a critical factor of development before anything else.

Whoever employs must pay the working man or woman as at when due. Non-payment of salaries to “economicide”, which is “a systemic destruction of lives of workers on account of lack of means of livelihood adding that many workers have died due to non-payment of salaries that were never adequate even when promptly paid.”

He also urged Governors who regularly paid their core civil servants to ensure their local government employees and teachers were also regularly paid.

He said “state workers are not divisible” when it comes to compensation just as when it comes to workers’ service delivery and productivity to the state.

He said governors can only be certified “labour friendly” if all workers in their states, private and public sectors, local and state employees are equally dignified with prompt salaries payment.