2,000 workers seek divine intervention over seven month’s unpaid salary, sacking in Adamawa
By Ibrahim Abdul
Over 2,000 unpaid civil servants in Adamawa State have goes spiritual as they offered special prayers for God’s intervention just as the workers also vowed to occupy the Adamawa State government house, Yola if the state government continue to withhold their salary and refused to settle backlog of their seven months’ salary arrears.
The aggrieved workers including those that were earlier served with the controversial ‘’ step-down’’ sack letters converged on Lelewal motel’s premises, carrying placards with different inscriptions, “demand for salary pay and reinstatement”, singing redemption songs with lamentations; “pay us our salaries. “We are suffering; some of our people are dead!
“Nigerians, please come to our aid, we’re poverty strikingly sick and dying. Our salary is suspended for seven months and still counting.
“Our hungry children can’t go to, because we can’t pay school fees under a government that claims to run free education though school fees are charged,” they said.
The workers claimed that their seven months salaries were suspended and their employment would be terminated for no explanatory reason alleging that , ‘’ because the government could not pay minimum wage, they were not given any form of severance entitlement or allowance till date, added one of the workers.
Speaking, a leader of the unpaid civil workers, Faisal Baba, said the unpaid workers were making arrangement to completely take over the government house till the government do the right thing.
“We have organized both Muslim and Christian prayer sessions at Lelewal motel in Yola today. The purpose is to seek the face of God and his divine intervention for the onerous challenges ahead.
“We have prayed God to mistreat anyone directly or remotely connected with our plight so that he can also taste the kind of bitter pills we are tasting now,” he said.
“In a very short time from now, we are going to stage a mega protest. It will not be like our maiden protest where only few of us came out. This time around all of us will come out with our mattresses and foodstuff to occupy the government house until the government does the right thing,” Baba said.
“Recently, the head of civil servants have disclosed that anyone employed in the state polytechnic after October 2018 will be sacked. 800 people will lose their jobs via this process.
“There is also another plan by the state government to sack about 8,000 civil servants, this scenario is even worse than the stand down,” he said.
It could be recalled that, Adamawa State Government and about 5,000 unpaid civil servants have been embroiled in a spat following the decision of the state government to stop payment of their salaries on the premise that the immediate past administration which employ them did not follow due process before employing them.
Already the state government directed the management of Adamawa Polytechnic, Yola, to put on hold sack of over 300 staff employed between 2017 and 2019.
The Director General, Media and Communications to the governor, Mr Solomon Kumangar, while speaking with newsmen in Yola, said that there were discrepancies in the process leading to the sack with reference to claims of implementation of recommendation of visitation panel’s report set up by the governor.
