Plateau civil servants embark on five-day warning strike

Civil servants in Plateau State have embarked on a five-day warning strike which started on Monday.

The workers decided to temporarily stop work following the government’s inability to pay their salaries for three months.

The workers also decided to go on strike due to the failure of the government to release third-party deductions such as their contributory pension.

At a press briefing at the conference hall of the Labour House in Jos, the state capital on Monday, the Chairman of the Joint National Public Service Negotiating Council (JNPSNC), Titus Malau, said they decided to embark on strike after it became clear that the government was not doing enough to pay them their outstanding salaries.

The decision by the workers to go on strike comes a day after the state’s Head of Civil Service, Sunday Chong, promised that government will pay them their outstanding salaries.

Last Thursday, the leadership of the various workers’ unions wrote a letter to the state government warning it that workers will go on strike if their outstanding salaries are not paid on Monday.

The unions said the action became necessary due to the government’s failure to fulfil an agreement reached with them.

He said: “This became imperative because the Government reneged in fulfilling our demands and particularly, the agreement reached on November 11, 2022, with the intervention of the Secretary to the Government of the State (SGS).

“The demands of the JNPSNC are as follows: Nonpayment of salaries for 3 months from September 2022 to date; Lack of release of Salary Structure to guide salary computation; Non-release of third party deduction from August 2022 to date and Non-release of promotion and annual increment with its arrears in full respectively.

“Others include Nonpayment of January and February 2022 annual increment arrears; Inability of Government to properly constitute and inaugurate the Joint National Service Negotiating Council in the state among others”, Mr Malau highlighted.

JNPSNC also faulted the White Paper report of the high-powered staff audit committee headed by Nde Gobak for failing to upgrade staff who were due for promotions.

“We expected them to have fulfilled the agreement on or before November 14, 2022, and August salary was supposed to be paid in full and September/October salaries also were to be paid on or before the end of November, but here we are in December.

“Automatically, of all we have discussed and agreed on, nothing has been done. That goes to say that they disrespected our agreement since even the August salary dropped in half. So, we can start counting from August, September, October, November and ideally, we are equally qualified for December salary by now”, the Plateau State Chairman of the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC), Eugene Manji, said