No fewer than 20 contract workers, rendering cleaning and security services in the Cross River State office of the Ministry of Niger Delta, on Monday protested against the nonpayment of their wages for four months.
The workers said beside being owed wages, the ministry had in December decided to terminate their running contract, rendering them jobless.
The protesters, who carried placards bearing various inscriptions to the office of the ministry along Parliamentary Road in Calabar, said they were last paid in August 2014.
Inscriptions on the placards included ‘Labourer deserve his or her wages’, ‘We are not for violence, we are for peace’, and ‘Pay us our wages’.
Our correspondent learnt exclusively that the ministry, had since 2009, disengaged its own cleaners and security workers from services due to financial constraints and decided to outsource the services.
Speaking on behalf of the workers, one of the outsourced security personnel, Mr. Victor Akata, said it was unfortunate that the ministry decided to lay them off without paying their salaries.
He said, “We have been working since 2009 in this state office of the ministry. Most of us are graduates but because of lack of job, we decided to stick to this one. We were initially owed seven months but they paid three months out of it last year.
“Now they have laid us off without paying our backlog. How do they want us to survive? Most of us could not even come to join in this protest because they do not even have transport fair.”
A source in the ministry, who preferred anonymity, told our correspondent that since the contract was outsourced to local contractors, each of the nine state offices, under the ministry, had been saddled with the responsibility of paying between N1.5m and N1.7m per month to these categories of workers.
She said, “What is happening here now will also have ripple effect in other state offices because they have not been paid as well. The ministry decided to disengage these categories of workers in 2009 and outsourced them.
“Again, in December 2014, they decided to terminate the contract altogether due to lean resources. Unfortunately, the workers have not been paid for some months. This is not happening in Cross River alone; it is all over the nine states where the ministry operates.”
However, speaking on behalf of the ministry, the accountant, Mr. James Adeboye, confirmed the workers’ claims, saying the message had been relayed to the ministry’s head office in Abuja for necessary action
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