We are not slaves, pay our 3-month outstanding wage award – workers tell Pres. Tinubu
The federal workers made this declaration during an online meeting held on Saturday.
Our correspondent gathered that the federal government introduced a wage award for workers after the subsidy was removed from Premium Motor Spirit (PMS). The federal workers have appealed to the government to pay the wage awards for March, April, and May.
In a communiqué issued at the end of the meeting and made available on Sunday, the federal workers emphasized that they are not slaves.
The communiqué, made available through the National Coordinator, Comrade Andrew Emelieze, stated: “It has been nearly four months since the federal government stopped the payment of wage awards to federal workers. Despite repeated pleas to the federal government (FG) to resume the payments, all efforts have fallen on deaf ears.
“The federal government workers met online to critically review our last request to the FG to pay the outstanding March, April, and May wage awards, among other things. It was generally agreed that the FG is pretending not to know that we, the federal workers, are experiencing unimaginable hardship since the removal of the fuel subsidy.
“We, therefore, resolve as follows: To embark on continuous peaceful protests and demonstrations in all federal government secretariats nationwide. These protests will become a ritual until the welfare needs of the federal workers and pensioners are addressed.
“The protests will commence on June 24th and continue until the issues of the wage award and the new national minimum wage are resolved. Every federal worker must take this protest as a duty, and anyone who opposes this continuous protest is an enemy of the workers.
“We urge federal workers to be armed with the fact that protest is a fundamental human right, and any federal worker who decides to dodge this collective agreement is a traitor. We are citizens, not slaves. Enough of this exploitation of the vulnerable. The government has cheated us enough. Pay us what you owe us. We have worked for it; we are not beggars.”
