Workers protest 13-months unpaid salaries in Rivers

Some workers in Rivers State on Thursday marched to the state House of Assembly to protest the refusal of Ahoada West Local Government chairman, Hope Ikiriko, to pay their salaries for 13-month salaries.

The workers, over 100 of them, who said they were staff of the local government, said Ikiriko has ensured they were not paid their salaries in the past 13 months because they were not indigenes of Ahoada LGA.

They therefore, pleaded with the state lawmakers to come to their aid by prevailing on Ikiriko to pay their salary arrears.

The workers, who bore placards with various inscriptions, said they had utilized every available internal mechanism to express their predicament, but no positive result had been achieved.

One of the workers, Peace Ina, who spoke on behalf of others said, “A total of 110 of us are here to ask for our unpaid 13 months’ salaries; the Chairman of the council, Hope Ikiriko, said we should go back to our local government areas and that we are not supposed to work in Ahoada West.

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“We have written letters to all the appropriate authorities pleading for our wages, but to no avail. We are going through untold hardship; our children are sick and dying because of hunger.

“We stayed at home during the state-wide lockdown without food; we were sick and there is no money to buy drugs. Our rents are due and our landlords are chasing us out of their property because we have no money to pay our rents; meanwhile, we were duly employed.”

The workers claim that initially, they were over 300 but that the local government decided to pay those of them who hailed from the LGA their own salaries, leaving them who are not indigenes.

They said it was on that note, they decided to cry to the state assembly to come to their aide.

Meanwhile, an aide of Ikiriko, Madu Madueke, reportedly claimed that the local government did not owe its workers their salaries.

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