In Addition To Months Of Salary Delays, Panic In Osun Over Mass Sack By State Government

by Deji Abiodun

Some workers in Osun State have expressed fear over alleged plan by the administration of Governor Rauf Aregbesola to sack civil servants on grade level 12 and above, including others above the age of 50 years.

Due to the inability of the Rauf Aregbesola’s administration to pay workers salary, the purported sack and continued salary delay has eroded the once cordial relationship that existed between Osun State government and its workers .

The workers alleged that the state government would sack them after the general election. One of them who spoke to our correspondent on Sunday said, “Everyone is scared.

We heard that Governor Aregbesola is planning to sack us. We still don’t know what to do and he is still owing us.” In its reaction, Osun State chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC) debunked the report that Aregbesola, wanted to sack the senior civil servants.

Aregbesola had, on several occasions, heaped the blame of the current financial crisis in the state on the Federal Government, alleging deliberate plans to cripple Osun and other APC-controlled states through excessive deductions.

A worker who spoke to NewsWireNGR on condition of anonymity said, “We are not even too bothered about the sack, for some of us, it is the refusal to pay us over five months salaries owed and now he wants to remove us from work”. She continued, “We’ve had to borrow to feed our children and the government isn’t disturbed as to when or how they intend to pay us up”.

The Federal Government, on its part, had equally denied the claim, saying Osun government’s problem is self-inflicted because the state collected huge loans, which it has to repay.

The party’s Director of Publicity Research and Strategy, Barr. Kunle Oyatomi, in a statement, described the report as a wicked lie.

“The PDP has done this to starve us, hoping that the government of Osun will resort to retrenchment of workers. Since this evil machination of the PDP has failed, they have now resorted to lying against the APC that it is contemplating a retrenchment exercise which PDP itself had programmed.”