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Members of the National Union of Local Government Employees, NULGE, and the Nigeria Union of Teachers, NUT, have reminded the local government council authorities that they were still on strike, which they embarked upon on July 28.

The strike was embarked upon after two years of failure to include local government workers and primary school teachers in the state on the N30,000 minimum wage consequential adjustment.

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The state had commenced the implementation for other civil servants in 2020, exempting the primary school teachers and council workers.

All the 17 local government council administrations, including Primary Health Workers and all public primary schools have been paralysed since that July 28, when members of both unions downed tool.

Briefing newsmen, on Tuesday, on the development, the NULGE and NUT disclosed that they were being asked to call off the strike before negotiation could continue with both trade unions.

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Chairman of the state NUT, Theophilus Odo, in the joint press briefing with NULGE, appealed to the government to approve the minimum wage for the teachers, as they have done for other workers in the state, noting that teachers were not happy embarking on the industrial action.

“Things are very difficult and we all buy from the same market, our children attend the same school with others and we all use the same means of transportation as workers in other ministries and parastatetals.

“This is a high level of marginalisation. So we ask the state government to look into this matter for industrial harmony to continue in the state,” Odo appealed.

Chairman of NULGE in the state, Kenneth Ugwueze, disclosed that several interventions and no less than three committees were set up by the state government in the past two years over the negotiation, without achieving any meaningful result.

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Ugwueze noted that this was the first time that some categories of workers were being paid lesser wage than others for over 30 months of the minimum wage implementation.

“And to cap it all, from the improved federal allocations to all tiers of government, we can all see that allocations have improved tremendously within this period.

“And we are surprised that with the improved allocations this minimum wage is still being denied these categories of workers.

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“So I want to join my colleagues in NUT to plead with the government to see that this consequential adjustment is implemented to these categories of workers so that we can be able to feed our families considering the hyper inflation in the country,” Ugwueze pleaded.

(Vanguard)