Unpaid salaries: Winners’ Chapel rallies food aid for Osun workers

The State Pastor of the Living Faith Church, also known as the Winners’ Chapel, Osogbo, Olumuyiwa Emmanuel, on Sunday made a passionate appeal to members of the church to start bringing foodstuffs and money to assist members (workers) who are civil servants that have not been paid their salaries in the last seven months.

The cleric made the appeal to the congregation in his sermon during the first service held at the church in Osogbo.

Emmanuel said that the church had observed that the salary issue was affecting some members of the church who were civil servants and had decided to make the call to offer them succour.

He said, “There are people among us who are civil servants and who have not been paid for about seven months. These people need our help especially at this time.

“Whatever you have, begin to bring them to the church from tomorrow. Bring foodstuffs and money. We must be our brothers’ keepers. Don’t bring clothes; this is not the time for that.

“There are people who slept on an empty stomach last night and we must not pretend that we don’t know. Bring foodstuff and money; they will be distributed to those of them who need it next Sunday.

“We are going to reach out to them effectively and maximally because nobody must suffer in our midst.”

The pastor said that there were some families where the husbands and the wives were civil servants, saying the effect of the unpaid salaries was being felt more in such homes.

It will be recalled that the labour unions in the state had on May 25 embarked on an indefinite strike to press home their demand for the backlog of salaries. The workers vowed not to return to work until their salaries were paid.

Governor Rauf Aregbesola had, on Tuesday at the inauguration of the sixth House of Assembly, explained that the delay in the payment of salaries was caused by the dwindling resources coming to the state from the Federal Government.

Aregbesola said, “Problem began in 2012 when our expenditure increased as a result of the hike in minimum wage. This was when we applied the increase to junior workers only. Then, our total emoluments rose to N2.7bn from the N1.4bn that I met in November 2010.

“By December of that year, it hit N3.5bn. At the same period, our statutory allocation increased marginally from N2.1bn to N2.5bn. By July of 2013, our total emoluments hit N4bn while our statutory allocation was N2.1bn. By then, we had extended the increase to other workers.”