Labour centre calls on Imo State for payment of pensioners’ entitlement

By allcitynews.ng

The call by the leadership of Centre for Labour Studies (CLS), Barrister Femi Aborisade, on Imo State Governor, Mr. Hope Odidika Uzodinma, to without further delay, pay pensioners’ their entitlements, should serve as a reminder to Imo State Governor that he can only remain relevant when he submits to the will of the citizenry.

The Centre for Labour Studies (CLS) made the call following the peaceful protest organized by the pensioners recently to draw the attention of the public and remind Imo Government to pay the backlog of unpaid pensions since February 2020.

Comrade Femi Aborisade, the Human Rights Activist and Labour Lawyer, who could not feign ignorance of the pains and the hard conditions the non-payment of the entitlements to the men and women that spent their energy and hard labour to serve the state, wondered why the state government is delaying the payment of the entitlements of the pensioners.

According to him, the non-payment of pensions in the State has compelled pensioners to embark on a completely novel mode of mass protest termed “alms-begging protest” for material survival and to draw public attention to their plight.

Other categories of workers in the State are also being owed several months of unpaid salaries. According to ordinary workers in the State, when wages are paid occasionally, they are paid haphazardly in ridiculous percentages.

Non-payment of wages, as and when due, is not only unlawful, it is also unconstitutional. It contravenes the Protection of Wages Convention No. 95 of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) which, in Article 12(1), makes it mandatory and obligatory, that “wages shall be paid regularly”.

Nigeria ratified ILO Convention No. 95 on the 17th day of October 1960. By the authority of Section 254C (2) of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999, as amended, the provisions of ILO Convention No. 95 have become constitutional provisions. By the authority of the NICN in Aero Contractors Co. of Nigeria Limited v. National Association of Aircrafts Pilots and Engineers (NAAPE) & ors [2014] 42 NLLR (Pt. 133) 664 NIC delivered by His Lordship Hon. Justice B. B. Kanyip, PhD (as he then was, but now the President of the NICN), ILO Conventions that have been ratified prevail over any other domestic legislation by virtue of their Constitutional status.

Calling on entire organized labour to take practical action and support the pensioners in Imo State, to ensure payment of wages, which include pensions, in all the states of the Federation, CLS stressed that non-payment is the height of inexplicable callousness for governments to impose lockdown on account of COVID-19 and still fail to pay wages to ensure workers and their families are able to purchase food for necessary nutrition to be able to resist COVID-19.