Governor Rauf Aregbesola of Osun State
across states of the federation became national issue early this year,
the Aregbesola government, which started the policy of denying workers
their salaries since late 2014, has been going to town to claim a form
of victory. We are told that the government is actually doing better
than most state governments in the country on the issue of salary
payment. However, before Aregbesola government and its town-criers, go
to town with their cheap propaganda, these are the facts on salaries
and pensions in the state:
1. Resident doctors in the state are owed salaries of more than 7
months. Hospitals were shut down for months as a result of the
non-payment of salaries of medical personnel. The impact of the
shutdown and low morale resulting from non-payment of salaries is
better imagined. The doctors, disturbed by the worsening health
situation in the state called off their strike, yet the government
refused to pay their outstanding salaries.
2. Retirees on state’s payroll have not been paid their ‘half-pension’
(half of a monthly pension) since February, 2016, while government
still owes arrears of half payment of eight months. Thus, effectively,
government owes them pension arrears of nine months.
3. Only primary school and local government retirees have received
‘half-pension’ up to April 2016. That the government hasn’t paid their
pensions, albeit half, up to date shows that Aregbesola government is
tampering with local government funds and allocations; because
pensions of these sections of retirees are mostly paid from local
government allocations, which have been released up to June, 2016. So,
when the government triumphantly claimed that it had been cleared of
graft and fund mismanagement by auditors and anti-graft agencies, know
that such clearance was a black market one gotten from Jankara market.
4. Those retirees on contributory pension scheme fare worse. The
government has failed to make its contributions to the scheme. As a
result, many retirees on this scheme have not been paid their
entitlements, several months after retirement. Many cannot pay their
bills including children’s school fees, rents, etc., while many others
have died as a result of inability to pay medical bills or feed
properly.
5. Public sector workers have not been paid half-salary since May,
2016. If this is added to the half payment arrears of ten months, it
means the government effectively owes workers full salary arrears of
eight months.
6. Many workers have been put into financial woes with the illegal
half salaries being paid. Many workers, when salaries were fully paid
up till 2014, have had to resort to loans from banks and cooperatives
for major expenses such as payment of children’s school fees, attempt
at building a house, etc. If salaries were regularly paid, many of
these loans would have been repaid. Now, interests and loan repayment
have made nonsense of the half-salary the government claims to be
paying. Now, many workers are collecting little or nothing from the
half-salary paid to them. Many workers and pensioners also owe local
creditors from whom they resolved their daily survival.
7. This is aside hundreds of workers whose salaries (of between 3 to 7
months) have been stolen by government officials through the
electronic payroll system run by a private company employed by the
government. Some months ago, a staff of the private company was
arraigned for defrauding workers of their salaries. However, this
situation has not stopped neither have workers’ salaries being totally
refunded.
8. Also, scores of teaching staff in the state-owned polytechnics and
colleges of education have been illegally demoted. The tactics is to
remove their names from the payroll and wait for them to complain
endlessly in order to wear them out. The government, through the
various institutions’ managements, will then re-enroll them into the
payroll but demote them to lower grade levels. This has meant loss of
over a quarter of the half-salary the staff are being paid.
9. To add insult to injury, some spokespersons of the government, are
claiming that government does not owe workers and pensioners. By this
action, the government is complicating financial problems of workers
and pensioners as their local creditors, who are being deceived by the
assertions of government’s spokespersons, mount pressure on workers
and pensioners. Is it not sheer wickedness that the same government
that put workers in economic quagmire is the one compounding their
woes with the irresponsible behaviour of its mouthpieces?
10. The same government that has no money to pay its impoverished
workers and pensioners ensured that fat-cat contractors and financial
institutions, that were used to enrich few politicians and big
business people, directly deduct billions from state’s federal
allocations even before such allocations get to the state. Meanwhile,
salaries and pensions that are statutory are left unpaid, thus
impoverishing several thousands of workers, pensioners, their
dependents, and by extension, other strata of the working class who
depend directly or indirectly on the working class.
The most unfortunate part of the story is that labour leaders, both at
state and national levels (including some so-called veteran labour
aristocrats who are on the payroll of the government), contributed to
this sorry state by providing soft-landing and alibi for the
Aregbesola government. Serious national labour leadership should by
now be organizing a nation-wide fight back against the madness of
unpaid salaries and pensions that is directly affecting over 2 million
state workers and pensioners, and over ten million dependents. This,
when linked with growing retrenchment, casualization and exploitation
of workers, will be capable of giving the working people the
confidence to fight for improvement in their living conditions. The
current approach of the Ayuba Wabba-led NLC and TUC, of intervening on
state-by-state basis will not be effective in resisting a policy of
non-payment of salary, which has become a national policy of most of
the state governments.
With several months of unpaid salaries and the attendant pauperization
this has caused, workers in any state may be forced accept any offer
from state governments. This was how the Aregbesola government forced
the illegal half-salary and half-pension on workers and pensions,
ostensibly with the backing of the labour leaders. In many other
states, workers have been compelled by many months of unpaid salaries,
to accept payment of one or two months’ salaries out of several
months’ outstanding, even after the states collected billions of naira
in bailout from federal government. Only nationally-coordinated,
democratically-organized mass actions can yield a lasting and
effective result. But it seems the labour leaders are preoccupied with
petty factional squabbles and leadership supremacy contest. One only
hopes that labour leaders will at least unite for once in the interest
of workers.
Kola Ibrahim (08059399178), author and activist is the Osun State
Secretary of the Socialist Party of Nigeria (SPN)
Suite 38/39, Abiola Shopping Complex, 123 Station Road, Osogbo, Osun State.
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