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A civil society group which has identified itself as Imo Democratic Congress (IDA), has raised an alarm over what it claimed were efforts by the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), President, Joe Ajaero, to compile fictitious names of people claiming to be unpaid public sector workers in Imo State.
The group’s President, Greg Mbannasor, in a statement which was sent to The Eastern Updates on Monday, said it had incontrovertible evidence to prove Ajaero has instructed his foot-soldiers in Imo State to compile fake names of workers claiming to be owed many months of salary arrears.
The Eastern Updates reports that the Ajaero-led NLC had earlier claimed Imo State government was owing arrears of salaries and pensions to the tune of over 10,000 people, as one of the grounds for its several attempts to embark on strikes in the state.
But, the state government has repeatedly denied the same and challenged him to produce the names of such workers with evidence that they are employees of the state.
The group said: ‘Noticing its inability to produce a list of state workers owed salaries was beginning to work against it in the eyes of the public, Ajaero recently asked its state imposed caretaker committee to circulate forms asking people owed salaries to put down some information.
‘The undated circular was sent out last Thursday and signed by Anukwroji Nduka Peters, state caretaker committee secretary of NLC, requesting the name, phone number, establishment and months owed with immediate effect.’
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Mbanasor said what gave out the document as insincere is that it did not even bother to ask for year and evidence of employment suggesting that any one claiming to be owed salary by the state government without evidence of employment was all that Ajaero needed.
‘It also shows that Ajaero never had any data all along yet he was telling the world that Imo State government was owing arrears of salaries of 22 months to 10,000 workers”
‘Yes Ajaero, couldn’t have provided any data because none existed. It was all propaganda aimed at stopping the re-election of Governor Hope Uzodimma. They were caught in their lies,’ Mbanasor said.
He said he also suspected that the National Security Adviser, Nuhu Ribadu, during a meeting with organised Labour, must have insisted he will not do anything without the list of unpaid workers hence, the NLC president and his allies hurriedly issued the notice for people to come and write their names as unpaid Imo workers.
“What this means is that they never had any list at all. Ajaero was just grandstanding working for Labour Party by dishing out falsehood to Nigerians,” he said.
The IDA helmsman urged the national security adviser to ignore whatever data the NLC generates as it was bound to have been doctored.
He said if they were genuine cases of those being owed, NLC ought to have attended that meeting with such a data.
