By Emmanuel Acha
Enugu – Gov. Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi of Enugu State says his greatest joy in office is the excellent health condition of retirees and workers in the state civil service.
Ugwuanyi said this at the 2018 Workers’ Day celebration in Enugu on Tuesday.
He said that his administration would remain committed to the welfare of workers and pensioners and urged workers to remain steadfast in their duties.
He said that his administration was not oblivious of the numerous challenges faced by the worker and would take steps to accede to the requests presented to him.
“My greatest joy is seeing retirees and workers marching strongly this day. I say glory be to God,” he said.
Ugwuanyi said both the executive and legislative arms of government were on the same page with workers in the state civil service, adding, “we are one family”.
The governor gave assurance that his administration would never take the workers for granted.
Earlier, the state Chairman, Trade Union Congress (TUC), Mr Igbokwe Chukwuma, had appealed to the state government to enroll workers in the state in the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS).
Chukwuma said that the appeal became necessary to curtail avoidable deaths involving civil servants due to lack of appropriate medical care.
“A lot of civil servants have died due to self medication. Some of them fall sick when salaries are not readily available and the resort to self-medication.
“It gives joy when you know that the appropriate medical attention will be provided to you when you fall sick,” he said.
Chukwuma also appealed to the state government to include workers in parastatal agencies in the centralised payment portal of the state government.
He said that the current practice where such workers received their salaries differently and on different dates was not encouraging.
He said that some retirees in certain parastatal agencies were owed over two years pension arrears and appealed to the state government to help ameliorate the situation.
Chukwuma thanked the state government for setting aside N100 million monthly for the payment of gratuities of retired civil servants.
He also thanked the government for acceding to the demand of re-imbursing workers whose contributions to the National Housing Fund were not remitted.
Chukwuma said that the workers would always rally the state government in achieving its set goals.
The state Chairman of Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Mr Virginia Nwobodo, said that workers were happy with the friendly disposition of the governor.
Nwobodo said that the governor had shown exemplary leadership since his assumption to office.
“We want to assure the state government that as partners in progress, we shall also be constructive in our engagements, while giving preference to factual arguments and superior reasoning,” Nwobodo said.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the theme of the 2018 Workers Day is ‘Labour Movement in National Development: Dare to Struggle, Dare to to Win’. (NAN)
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