Strike: Mimiko begs workers, calls for dialogue

Olusegun Mimiko

As the industrial action embarked upon by the civil servants in Ondo State continues, the State Governor, Dr. Olusegun Mimiko, has called on the workers to show understanding with his administration, saying he was ready to dialogue with them in order to end the strike.

The workers commenced the strike two weeks ago following the inability of the state government to pay their five months salaries.

The governor, who addressed all the state workers from Grade-level 1 to 17 at the International Event Centre, Akure, the state capital on Tuesday, expressed his displeasure over the strike, noting that the industrial dispute had made the state lose millions of naira which would have been generated internally.

The state governor explained that the state had N3.4bn in its coffers presently, out of which N2.7bn could be paid to local governments’ workers and primary school teachers for one month while the remaining N700m was capable of paying the health workers.

He said if the workers could call off the strike and come to the negotiating table with him, the matter would be resolved, stressing that the government had been spending all the monthly allocations on workers’ salaries and borrowing to carry out capital projects in the last one year.

He said, “We have lost over 40 per cent of our monthly IGR to the strike, I feel the pain, our hospitals are shut and many accident victims would have died as a result of this strike.”