Osun workers protest unpaid five-month salaries

Civil servants in Osun State trooped out on Tuesday to protest against the alleged non-payment of five months salaries by the state government.

The workers, who were led by the Chairman of the Trade Union Congress in the state, Mr. Olatunji Akinyemi, marched through the Osogbo/Gbongan Road, chanting anti-government songs.

The workers said apart from the failure of the Governor Rauf Aregbesola-led administration to pay them the outstanding salaries, the same government had refused to remit pension contributions, deducted from their previous salaries, to various retirement savings accounts.

They claimed that the governor was busy spending the state’s resources on campaigns of the All Progressives Congress and left workers to suffer untold hardship.

The TUC chairman, who spoke in an interview with our correspondent, said workers who were due for promotion since 2013, had been denied their rights, adding that the government had not shown that the workers meant anything to his administration.

He said, “We are out on the streets today to protest the non-payment of our salaries. The government is owing us five months.

“Apart from the salaries, the loan repayment deductions, pension deductions and union dues deducted from our salaries were  stopped were not remitted to the appropriate quarters.

“The workers say no to non payment of our salaries, we say no to illegal withholding of fund deducted from our salaries. The government has refused to pay its part of workers’ pension, the ones deducted from our salaries were not remitted.”

He said that no worker could go on retirement now with this situation because they would suffer if they tried it.

One of the workers, who identified herself as Kemi, told our correspondent that she and many of her colleagues trekked an average of six kilometers everyday to and from their places of work.

Despite going through this suffering, she added that they had not been paid a dime since October 2014.

The media aide to the governor, Mr. Semiu Okanlawon, promised to send the position of his principal on the protest, which he had yet to do as of the time of filing this report.