Osun State pensioners, under the forum of 2011-2012 retirees, on Monday held a peaceful protest to demand the implementation of the N18,000 minimum wage signed into law in 2011.
The pensioners said their benefits were prepared with the N9,000 minimum wage despite being in service while the N18,000 minimum wage was approved and signed into law.
According to the elderly protesters, a former governor of the state, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, deliberately excluded officers from level 8 and above from benefiting from the N18,000 minimum wage while they were still in service.
Speaking with newsmen, Comrade Yemi Lawal, the leader of the group, said subsequent governments have failed to address their demands despite a court order.
According to Lawal, the state government has been mandated by the court to pay the pensioners their arrears using the N18,000 minimum wage template.
Lawal called on the Attorney General of the Federation to intervene and caution the state government on the contempt of court and respect the judgment.
He said, “We were in the service in March 2011 when N18,000 was signed into law by former governor Rauf Aregbesola for Osun workers. Aregbesola, then, said officers from grade level 1 to 7 would begin to enjoy the new wage as from March that same year, and he complied and paid arrears.
“However, he said senior officers from grade level 8 and above would start getting the new N18,000 minimum wage by August 2011, but he didn’t implement it.
“In 2012, the government of Aregbesola went to an industrial court in Lagos, but the court did not rule in its favour and asked the government to obey the agreement signed. However, he didn’t implement the agreement until we retired in December 2012.
“We went to the industrial court in 2014, and we got a judgment on October 05, 2017, in our favor, and they didn’t appeal the judgment until 2021 when they went to an appeal court.
“But their appeal was struck out this year, and since then, we’ve been making a series of appeals to the government to obey the court, but we haven’t been answered. We wanted to gnash the government account or seek contempt of court, but we thought that would be too harsh.
“We are crying out to the whole world. We want the Attorney General of the Federation to know that Osun State is not obeying court judgment. We are only appealing to the government to obey the court order by implementing the N18,000 wage for us. Our benefit was prepared with N9,000 then and there is a difference between N9,000 and N18,000.
“We are suffering and our people are dying. We don’t want a faceoff with the government, but we cannot continue to fold our hands. Our request is for the governor to set the necessary machinery in motion for the implementation of the court order.”
Meanwhile, the state government, through the Commissioner for Information, Hon. Kolapo Alimi, said he was hearing the group’s complaints for the first time and charged them to channel their demands to the appropriate quarter.
He, however, condemned their act, describing it as cheap blackmail to the Adeleke-led administration in the state and maintained that the government would not succumb to their blackmail.
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