With 1,000 aides, Ajimobi is wasteful, say Oyo workers.

OYO State workers currently on indefinite strike over the non payment of the N18,000 minimum wage have described the Governor Abiola Ajimobi-led administration as wasteful.

They said yesterday that the governor's aides were about 1,000 who, according to them, “do little or nothing for the progress of the state".

Leaders of the three labour unions in the state disclosed this yesterday while addressing their colleagues at the labour secretariat in Ibadan. 

According to the Chairman of the state Public Service Joint Negotiating Council (PSJNC), Comrade Nurudeen Arowolo, it was laughable for the state government to claim that 92 per cent of the purported N4.1 billion monthly wage bill of the state was being expended on civil servants, when, in actual fact, the commissioners and aides of  Ajimobi were the ones getting the larger chunk of the money.

If the stock of the monthly salaries of the various political office holders were to be taken, Arowolo said, Oyo people would marvel that Ajimobi’s aides quadruple those of Adebayo Alao-Akala's, which Ajimobi had always vilified as prodigal.

“The highest civil servant in any ministry is the Permanent Secretary, with a salary of about N550,000. You can imagine how much a Commissioner in Oyo State receives monthly, it is close to N1 million. Multiply that by the number of commissioners the governor has. And then the Special Advisers and Special Assistants and many others.

“In all the 33 local governments, there are 14 Special Assistants, each of who collects N150,000 monthly without doing anything. Multiply the figure by the number of councils. N150,000 can pay five Grade Level 07 workers. These huge numbers are in addition to the caretaker chairmen, Secretaries and others.

"In all, we can’t have less than 1,000 of such people throughout the state and yet to pay just real minimum wage of N18,000 is difficult for the governor,” he said.

Arowolo noted that it was hypocritical for Ajimobi, who during electioneering campaigns, promised to pay N22,000 minimum wage for workers, while also boasting that he was armed with the financial position of the state, now to renege and be singing a different song.

On the claim by the government that there were more than 38,000 workers in its employment, the Labour body pointed out that the biometric exercise embarked upon by the administration had revealed that the workforce in the state was a little more than 26,000.

They, therefore, unanimously vowed that they would not be intimidated by the directive of government that registers be opened at the various duty posts in the state, a step aimed at compelling them to report for duty.

They insisted that the notice to the government that the workers were officially embarking on an indefinite strike from Monday was irreversible unless the N18,000 is paid across board.