Tuesday, July 15, 2025 - The organised labour in Ogun State, comprising the Nigeria Labour Congress, Trade Union Congress and Joint Negotiating Council, on Monday, directed the entire workforce in the state to proceed on indefinite strike.
The development was a result of an unremitted N82bn
contributory pension deduction spanning 14 years.
This was contained in a document signed by the leadership of
the NLC, TUC and JNC and made available to The PUNCH on
Monday.
The decision to embark on the trade disputes was said to
have been taken at the statewide congress held on Monday, where the workers
voted for indefinite suspension of their services over the dysfunctional Ogun
State Pension Reform Law 2008 and amended 2013.
The 2013 Pension amended law is said to have established the
Contributory Pension Scheme which stipulated that both employers and employees
should contribute a set aside monthly savings of 7.5 per cent each of the basic
salary of the workers, which is to be kept by appointed pension fund
administrators.
The labour claimed that practically, in its 17 years of its
passage as a law, from all indicators, the CPS has, at best, been practised in
complete breach of the law that established it.
The statement stated that “Accessible records on it
established the incontrovertible fact that it has rather been a drain of
resources for the workers, and curiously, a wage lowering tactic for successive
governments of the state.
“Only 34 months (that is, three years less than two months)
of the expected 204 months (17 years) of the deductions from both sides, i.e.
the state/local governments were remitted to the PFAs.
“In the last 14 years, and still counting, monthly
deductions only from workers’ salaries have been diligently consistent without
remittance to their PFAs.
“The statue-prescribed investments of the funds, the
interests it could have yielded, amongst other associated benefits are all in
limbo
“It simply translated to the apparent shortchanging of the
entirety of active and dedicated workers of the state over the years.”
The labour unions recalled the widely-publicised Adekunle
Hassan Pension Reform Committee set up in 2022, adding that neither its
findings nor its recommendations were released.
“Nor was there any definitive concrete step taken to address
the issue. Countless correspondences on it were written and delivered to the
state authorities with no single response.
*Suffice that workers unanimously demanded for outright
cancellation of the shortchanging scheme which, according to its amended
version, comes into full effect on July 1, 2025.
“In clear terms, the indefinite suspension of services
across the state and local governments takes full effect from midnight, Tuesday
15th July 2025,” the statement added.
Recall that the organised labour, about two weeks ago, urged
the government to either suspend the implementation of the CPS which was
supposed to have commenced on July 1, or revert to the old pension scheme.
The workers said the 17-year-old pension scheme was signed
into law in 2008 by former Governor Gbenga Daniel but it had been designed to
fail, because the administration failed to remit 25 months of workers’
deduction before leaving office in May 2011.
They stated further that though Daniel’s successor, Senator
Ibikunle Amosun, amended the law in 2013, to commence the implementation of the
contributory pension scheme in July 2025, he also remitted only nine months of
workers’ deductions during his eight-year tenure.
The labour leaders affirmed that Governor Dapo Abiodun,
within six years in office, remitted no dime as workers’ deductions into the
pension scheme.
0 Comments