The Imo State chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has reminded Governor Hope Uzodimma that workers in the State are disenchanted and unhappy due to the poor treatment they have always received from the State Government.
In a statement issued on Friday in Owerri by the State Publicity Secretary, Lancelot Obiaku, he called on the State Government to dignify the civil service and make it appealing again by treating workers better.
The PDP accused the State Government of playing on the intelligence of civil servants by what it termed a “fraudulent manipulation of the national minimum wage”.
He said: “Obviously, the pride of civil service is lost in Imo State. Workers are not meeting up with daily economic demands as the State government maintains the culture of negligence and ill-treatment against them”.
The party declared that the State is short in the workforce, and there is no urgency on the side of the government to rejig it, adding that what is also important to note is that young people in the State appear not interested anymore in joining the civil service.
He said: “How can they be when Imo workers are paid the lowest salary in the entire Nigeria? People wouldn’t want to be associated with an employee who shortchanges his workers by denying them their promotion benefits and who refuses to actually implement the minimum wage”.
The party decried the failures of Imo State government to implement the old N30,000 minimum wage given that level 10 and 12 workers in various ministries barely earned around N50,000 monthly.
According to PDP, today what we have in the state is a situation where a senior worker earns almost the same as a junior worker.
He said: “If a level 5 worker earns N71,000 and a level 12 worker earns N73,000, will you call that payment of minimum wage? Where did the tens of thousands that should accrue to the level 12 worker go? Do you know the irony? Workers who are at level 5 and below do not constitute up to 10 percent of the workforce”.
They pointed out the anomalies where the government paid workers from the Government House without the input of the labour union and various ministries.
He said: “No one has seen the salary table with which the government is paying salaries. It’s a fraudulent scheme”.
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