Workers to Suswam: You are our enemy

Governor Gabriel Suswam of Benue State has been described as workers’ enemy.
To remove this tag, the Chairman of the state chapter of Trade Union Congress (TUC), Comrade Ordue Tartenger, told the governor to clear the three months salary arrears owed workers before leaving office on May 29.
Tartenger spoke in Makurdi, the state capital, on the occasion of the Workers Day celebration in Makurdi.
He lamented that the Suswam administration massively owed workers and pensioners arrears of their salaries and other legitimate entitlements.
According to him, this has brought untold hardship on them leading them into destitution.
“At present , Benue workers can no longer meet up their daily financial needs due to non-payment of salaries and gross deductions at the time payments were stopped,“ he said.
Ordue requested immediate stoppage and return of deductions made from the monthly salaries of civil servants in the state in the name of donations, contributions and levies which they did not assent to.
He called on the outgoing administration of Suswam to pay workers the arrears of their leave grant from 2012 to 2015.
Suswam, represented at the ceremony by the Permanent Secretary, Benue Civil Service Commission, Mr Adaikwu Inwata, reaffirmed his government’s commitment to workers’ welfare.
He described his government as “most worker-friendly“ since the birth of democracy in Nigeria, noting that the state civil servants had enjoyed the biggest salary package since he assumed office some years ago.
The governor said that salary and pension payments fell into arrears due to the current economic downturn in the country.
He said that he was grateful that the workers heeded his appeal leading to deduction of their salaries, adding that it had helped the government to record some economic stability and pay wages of primary school teachers.
Suswam informed the workers that government was making concerted efforts to pay their salary arrears before the winding up of his administration and appealed to them to continue supporting government’s policies.