A/ Ibom workers mull over delay in N70,000 minimum wage payment, may down tools

Akwa Ibom workers have threatened to embark on an industrial action in order to wake the government from its ‘sleep’ on the implementation of the new minimum wage bill in the State.

Workers in the state are said to be worried that the State government has kept them in suspense over its plan with regard to the implementation of the new N70,000 minimum wage.

When a Daily Sun correspondent visited the popular Idongesit Nkanga Secretariat in Uyo, civil servants were sighted in groups discussing the issue.

One of them who didn’t want his name mentioned explained that they were getting more worried by the day as the governor seems not to be in a hurry to make any pronouncement on the matter.

According to the worker, “Pastor Umo Eno does not seem to be worried or disturbed by the plight of civil servants in Akwa Ibom State.”

“Imagine non- oil producing states like Adamawa and Ebonyi announcing the swift implementation of the new minimum wage with effect from September,which is this month but our state with the highest federal government monthly allocation is not making any move to implement the same,”the source lamented.

“Our Governor has not even bothered to set up an implementation committee not to talk of making any statement about this very sensitive issue which has become a national discourse as it were. His continuous mute keeping attitude on this burning issue is a serious source of worry to us who are at the receiving end. Our families are starving as we are faced with the food inflation ever in the history of the Nigerian nation”, lamented another civil servant (names withheld) who, in a chat with this reporter, also regretted that organised labour in the state “is just too weak to champion workers’ cause.”

It would be recalled that Pastor Umo Bassey Eno, while the Federal Government discussion on the new salary structure for the nation’s workforce lasted, had promised to pay whatever the federal government arrived at.

The State Chairman of Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) Comrade Sunny James while reacting to the workers threat for strike warned them to desist from such action as the the state government has not received the template for implementation of the new minimum wage from the National Salary and Wages Commission.

“Let them try it. I will be mad with such a group of workers in this state,” he warned.

“Tell them that it doesn’t work like that. There must be a salary table drawn by the National Salary and Wages Commission before States can commence their implementation of the new wage bill .

“I have tried for workers in this state and they can not behave funny . Tell them to stop such plans immediately.”