According to pumch reports, Abia, Akwa Ibom, Bauchi, Benue, Cross River, Ekiti, Imo, Jigawa, Kano, Katsina, Kogi. Ogun, Ondo, Osun, Oyo, Plateau, Rivers and Zamfara owe their employees salary arrears of at least 6 months, citing a task force report by the Nigeria Labour Congress.
It further states that “The report of the Task Force of the NLC revealed that while some of the states had paid salaries of workers up to date, they were owing arrears of pensions running into months.
The states owing salaries or pensions are Abia, Akwa Ibom, Bauchi, Benue, Cross River, Ekiti, Imo, Jigawa, Kano, Katsina, and Kogi.
Others are Ogun, Ondo, Osun, Oyo, Plateau, Rivers and Zamfara states.
The report says that Adamawa, Anambra, Bayelsa, Borno, Delta, Edo, the FCT, Gombe, Kaduna, Kwara, Lagos, Nasarawa, Niger, Sokoto and Taraba are not indebted to their workers.
The report paints a bleak picture of civil service workers across the country. Take Abia for example. The report states that it has not paid the salaries of workers at the State Teaching Hospital for nine months.
The state is also said to be owing workers of the Hospital Management Board eight months’ salary; Abia State Universal Basic Education Board, six months; Abia State Polytechnic, five months; local government workers, four months; and teachers, three months’ salary arrears.
Enugu may have paid the salaries of civil servants till date, but parastatals are owed 12 months’ salaries and pension and gratuity payments haven’t been issued since 2010.
For other states, the picture is a sorry one. Osun, on average, owes six months’ in salary and pension payments; Plateau, six months in salaries and seven months in pension entitlements; Benue, five months of salaries and four months of pension benefits; Kogi, four months in arrears of pension and salary payments; and Oyo, which owes three months in salaries and between five and 11 months of pension payments.
States which are likely to owe salaries and pension of workers well into the commencement of the incoming administration’s tenure on May 29 include Ekiti, which is already in arrears of state employee salaries for three months; Jigawa, which owes judiciary workers a month in salary arrears; Ondo, which owes a month’s salary and pension payments, while Ogun also owes a month of salary payments but a mind-boggling 52 months of unremitted pension deductions to the Pension Fund Administration.
While Zamfara has paid workers’ salaries up to date, the salaries of workers recruited in 2014 have not been paid.
The NLC Task Force also fingered Rivers State for owing one month’s worth of pay and three months worth of pension payments while Kano is yet to pay newly employed teachers for three months.
The report was silent on the status of Yobe and Ebonyi on the ground that “there was no information on them.”
