Workers in the Nigerian civil service, under the Joint National Public Service Negotiating Council (JNPSNC), on Friday gave the Federal Government notice that they would would embark on a five-day warning strike from Monday following “government’s indifference to their demands for an increase in their wages and elimination of salary disparities between various cadres in the civil service, according to local media.
JNPSNC said it had given 1 May as its deadline to the government to resolve the issues, adding that the strike action had received the backing of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and the Trade Union Congress (TUC).
Thisday newspaper reported the story under the headline “Civil Servants Begin St rike Monday over Wages”, quoting the JNPSNC chairman, Olakunle Olaitan, as saying that the action became necessary because government was paying lip service to their demands.
He expressed dismay that a director in the civil service takes home about N130,0 00 monthly (150 naira = US$ 1) while a permanent secretary earns about 10 times that amount.
“May Day: Nationwide Strike Begins Monday”, was the headline in The Tribune whic h reported that Olaitan, who is also the National President of the Association of the Senior Civil Servants of Nigeria (ASCSN), had directed all Federal civil servants to go on holiday and stay away from their offices throughout next week.
According to him, the government had offered the civil servants a ridiculous 10 per cent wage increase, while workers in other sectors, within the same public service, like those in Customs, radio and television, among others, were offered 100 per cent wage increase and above.
According to The Tribune, NLC Vice President, Comrade Isa Aremu, said that the s tory of Nigeria as an independent nation in the last 50 years was that of reversal of fortune from grace to grass, saying it had moved from prosperity to poverty.