Ekiti State Governor, Ayodele Fayose, on Saturday warned striking civil servants in the state to return to work or forfeit their salaries.
Fayose blamed the irregular payment of salaries in the last few months to poor allocation from the Federal Government.
Speaking during an interview on the state owned radio and television station in Ado Ekiti, the state capital, the governor said embarking on strike was not the solution to the problem.
He said, “Since I assumed office, every month the allocation paper comes from Abuja, a committee made up of labour leaders and other stakeholders has been the one sharing whatever comes among all sectors. If I am not hiding anything from labour leaders and workers, I expect them to understand. I feel their pain but there is limit to what I can do in this type of situation.
“Workers at the Ekiti State University Teaching Hospital under the auspices of JOHESU have written that they are not on strike and people like that will be paid from what came from Abuja.
“Since I have no power to stop workers from going on strike, I wish them well; but we need to understand what the situation is like. They cannot say that I have not consistently been alerting Nigerians since late last year that a time like this is coming. In fact, the next allocation may be smaller than the one we are complaining about now.”
The Nigerian Labour Congress, NLC, had on Thursday last week began an indefinite strike over failure of the state government to settle five months salaries owned its workers.
Fayose also advocated for dialogue between the Federal Government and the nNiger Delta militants, stressing that the use of military might will not arrest the issue of pipe line attacks.
“The Federal Government should use dialogue to resolve the Niger Delta issue and stem the tide of incessant bombing of oil facilities that is impeding the flow of revenue to the nation’s coffers,” he said.
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