Labour begins one-week warning strike in Benue

Members of the Organised Labour in Benue State yesterday shut down the state secretariat and ministries located outside it as they commenced a one-week warning strike.

The state chapters of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and the Trade Union Congress (TUC) had on Thursday last week threatened the strike action unless the government offset all their unpaid salaries.

Our correspondent who went around town reports that the union leaders made sure that workers did not have access to their various offices as they locked up the gates with padlocks.

The union leaders drove on a convoy from one ministry to another to enforce the sit-at-home order just as their action affected food vendors and petty traders operating in areas around the ministries of Works, Agriculture, Environment, Water among others.

Other business activities affected included commercial computer centres located within the areas which could not operate their trade as there were no people to patronise them while motorcycles and buses plying the route had no passengers.

Earlier last month, on August 4, the unions had asked the state government to clear all salaries owed state workers or they would embark on industrial action beginning from September 1.

But, Ortom after a meeting with the labour leaders at the Government House in Makurdi, told newsmen that he had appealed to them for more time.

“Since we came into office, we have been having short fall in monthly federal allocation and it was as a result of this that we declared state of emergency on salary payment, we are making moves to get funds to settle the salary arrears,” Ortom said.

However, in a communiqué issued and signed by the NLC Chairman, Godwin Anya and his TUC counterpart, Tordue Tartenger, last week at the end of its expanded meeting, the labour insisted that they would inevitably embark on the exercise which began yesterday.