Osun senior civil servants begins strike on Feb. 27

THE Association of Senior Civil Servants of Nigeria (ASCSN) in Osun has said that the union will embark on three-day warning strike if its demands are not met by Thursday.

The Chairman of the association, Mr Akinyemi Olatunji, made this known in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Osogbo on Wednesday.

Olatunji said the warning strike would commence on Friday, Feb. 27 when the seven-day ultimatum it gave to government to meet its demands would expired on Thursday.

He said if government failed to meet its demands after the warning strike, the workers would embark on an indefinite strike.

The chairman said what the workers were demanding for their rights as civil servants in accordance with labour laws.

He said the demands included prompt payment of workers’ salaries, payment of workers’ salaries up to date, due promotion of workers and review of workers’ pension contributory scheme.

Olatunji said non-payment of workers’ salaries for about four months now had subjected workers in the state to hardship, reduced many to beggars and created serious financial pains for the rest.

He said since May 2014, the association wrote letters to the government asking it to proffer solution to the deteriorating workers’ condition of service but the letters were never acknowledged.

Olatunji said that the government only agreed to meet with the association two Fridays ago where the association seized the opportunity to X-ray its plights and demands as contained in previous letters.

He said the seven-day ultimatum handed down to the government by the association after the meeting became imperative when no concrete solution was proffered by the government representatives.

He said all that the workers asked was that government should give their demands top priority from its federal allocation because salary was an entitlement and not a privilege.

He urged the workers in the state not to be intimidated because ASCSN was a legal association that could call its members out on strike whenever the need arose.

NAN reports that ASCSN on Thursday Feb. 19 issued a seven-day ultimatum to the state government to meet its demands or face industrial action from the state workers.

A former NUT Chairman in the state, Mr Oladele Adetunji, however, said the association had no moral and legal right to call for an industrial action.

But a former Commissioner for Information in the state, Mr Sunday Akere, pleaded with the workers not to embark on the strike. (NAN)