By Festus Ahon

ASABA—STRIKING workers of Delta State House of Assembly have forced the House Committee on Agriculture and Natural Resources to hold its public hearing on the state Normadic Cattle Rearing Control bill at the state’s Labour House.

The workers, under the aegis of Parliamentary Staff Association of Nigeria, PASAN, resumed their strike action over unpaid allowances, locking up all the entrance gates, thereby preventing the lawmakers from accessing the Assembly complex since Tuesday.

The public hearing had in attendance, traditional rulers, representatives of the Christian Association of Nigeria, CAN, Muslim Lawyers Association of Nigeria, Urhobo Progress Union, UPU, among others.

Restating the commitment of the legislature to the security of lives and property in the state through making viable laws, the committe, chaired by Mr. Evance Ivwurie, noted that the issue of cattle herdsmen had become a nationally sensitive one.

The committee noted that the state Assembly took the bull by the horn by proposing the bill which it said, seeks to protect host communities against the virus of neo-terrorism in the guise of nomadic cattle rearing.

Ivwurie said that the bill seeks to provide for the Control of Nomadic Cattle Rearing in the state, to establish the Delta State Advisory Council on Grazing, to repeal the Control of Movement of Animals Law 2000 and other related matters.

Meanwhile, some of the delegates who lamented the hardship and terror unleashed on their people by herdsmen said lands must not be given to the herdsmen and called for their expulsion from the state.