Isiaka blames Amosun for Ogun workers’ strike
The Ogun State governorship candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the last election, Prince Gboyega Nasir Isiaka has blamed the indefinite industrial action embarked upon by the civil servants and doctors in the state “on the insensitivity of the Senator Ibikunle Amosun-led government to the plight of the workers”.
Isiaka, who expressed concerns about the incessant workers strike in the state noted that if Governor Amosun had considered workers’ welfare an utmost priority, as promised during his electioneering campaign, hospitals, schools and offices would not have been closed by now, subjecting patients and citizens of the state to untold hardship.
The Ogun workers under the Joint National Public Negotiating Council (JNPNC) had since Monday embarked on an indefinite strike over the failure of the state government to honour Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed by tripartite group of the state labour leader, the Federal Ministry of Labour and Employment and the state government.
Isiaka, in a statement he personally signed noted that it is wrong for the state government to jettison an agreement it voluntarily entered into with the workers especially on the deductions from their salaries running into four years.
The General Secretary of the JNPNC, Comrade Olusegun Adebiyi had on Monday disclosed that the state government is owing workers “four years of contributory deductions, non-payment of gratuities which was last paid in October 2012”.
Isiaka said with the abundant resources available in the state and with government’s claim of generating over N6b as Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) every month, government needs not to tamper with the contributory deductions of workers to finance its white Elephant projects.
He said, “I feel for thousands of Ogun state workers. My heart bleeds for many patients at all our General Hospitals and Primary health care centres that have been abandoned and allowed to suffer since Monday when Doctors had been on this avoidable strike. What shall we say of our children in public schools subjected to idleness while they supposed to be learning like their colleagues in other states”.
While urging the government to honour the agreement it freely entered into with the workers without delay, he, however pleaded with the health workers to consider the suffering their patients are going through.
