Following the ongoing strike action in Kaduna state, the Action Democratic Party (ADP) has asked governor Nasir El-rufai to immediately reverse all the policies considered against the wellbeing of workers in the state.
The opposition party also called on the labour union to take cognisance of its members and the wider populace by being flexible and amenable to negotiations that will lead to a peaceful, timely resolution of the ongoing impasse.
In a statement signed Tuesday in Abuja, by its national chairman, engr. Yabagi Yusuf Sani, said the Kaduna state government holds the ultimate ace to the restoration of normalcy in the state.
“Governor Nasir El- Rufai will have to climb down from his high horse and bite the humble pie by revisiting indeed, reversing some of the policies and actions that are the grouse of the workers. The alternative to this suggested panacea is in our view, a degeneration of the prevailing condition of anomie, general poverty and despondency among the citizens with resultant descent into a state of heightened crime, insecurity and anarchy.
“The ADP also urges the APC federal government to step into the crisis by deploying all necessary instruments at its disposal to prevail on the Kaduna state government to come off its hard-line posture, impunity and recalcitrance. This is in view of the state’s raging afflictions of banditry, kidnapping and communal clashes and, the visible potency of the brewing industrial action to snowball into another national crisis. A stitch in time they say, saves nine.”
According to ADP, the purge in the local government councils that swept off about 8000 workers and the latest booting given to over 4000 workers in the state civil service.
“The ADP is in total accord with the NLC that the Kaduna state government actions are not only callous, reckless and inhuman, but has as well, severely and severally breached the nation’s constitution , international labour laws and conventions. Our party further shares the expressed fears of labour that, if unchecked, other state governments would sooner than later borrow from the Kaduna example of unbridled assault on their civil servants.
“The ongoing labour strike in Kaduna state is obviously a complication of the prevailing agonising state of pains of a people already weighed down by the traumatic burden of insecurity and abject poverty largely due to a clueless administration that is impertinent and impervious to reason, averse to well intended opinions as it is haughty, pompous and insensitive to the suffering of citizens.
“The ADP understands the weird posture of the Kaduna state towards its civil servants as the pangs and tantrums of a bankrupt government that had overindulged in excessive borrowing and indebtedness. Just like the APC federal government’s recently muted intention to reduce salaries of its workers as a strategy of shoring up the parlous state of its finances, the APC government in Kaduna has simply resorted to making scapegoats and sacrificial lambs of its hapless, abused and beleaguered workers.
“The ADP is particularly takes exception to the illegal treatment whereby those sacked including the teachers and others in 2017 are not paid their disengagement benefits, their gratuity and due pension allowances. This attitude of the government is sordid, callous, arbitrary and a gross violation of extant laws and regulations regarding the disengagement of workers even on the framework of “redundancy” as being claimed by the state government.”
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