AS Nigerian workers today join their counterparts across the world to celebrate May Day, gloom, frustration, bitterness, anger, lamentation, and despair are not enough to describe their mood as not more than 10 states have fully paid workers’ salaries and allowances up to date. Investigation by Sunday Vanguard showed that only Edo, Lagos, Delta, Ebonyi, Anambra, Cross River, Akwa Ibom, Kano and Enugu states have paid their workers’ salaries and allowances up to April. However, Rivers State has paid March salary and pension up to February, Borno State has paid up to March with the exception of its Hosing Corporation workers, while Ogun State, though paid salary, has neither remitted pension deductions from workers’ salaries for months, and has not paid gratuities since 2012. Among the indebted states are Ekiti, Kwara, Kaduna, Osun, Plateau, Ondo, Abia, Bayelsa, Oyo, Imo, Kogi and Benue. According to checks, while Ekiti State is owing not less two months salaries, the number of months owed pensioners were not known at the time of this report. In Kwara, local government workers and the State Universal Basic Education Board, SUBEB, have not been paid between four and five months salaries, staff of the state Water Corporation have not been paid for the past six months, while other paratatals have not been paid in the last two months. Similarly, workers and pensioners in Kaduna State have not been paid about seven months arrears, while Osun has unpaid outstanding salaries from July 2015 to January 2016. Plateau State, pensioners are owed eight months, council workers, four months while other workers are owed three months. In Ondo State, while pensioners are owed four months, civil servants are owed five. In Abia State, civil servants are owed between two and four months, but workers of the state Health Management Board have not been paid since December 2015. In the same vein, while civil servants in Imo State were last paid 70 percent of their salaries in January, pensioners cannot even remember when they were last paid. Workers in Oyo State are owed between two and five months, their counterparts in Kogi are owed five months, while those in Benue State are owed three months. According to Sunday Vanguard investigation, Edo State has been up to date in the payment of salaries and pension to its civil servants and pensioners.While the workers receive salaries before the 25th of every month, pensioners sometimes receive their pensions before workers.

www.vanguardngr.com/2016/05/bleak-may-day-26-states-workers-owed-salaries/

Edo Governor is playing politics with his people by increasing the minimum wage even when it is obvious he could not pay the federal minimum wage.

All in the name of politics and Edo 2016.

We are watching.

This oil price crash has exposed a lot