Civil servants employed in the 2018/2019 window whose employments were initially suspended but reinstated and regularized by Governor Hope Uzodinma of Imo state, may have again run into troubled waters.
The reinstated workers are exasperated that the memo confirming their employment issued by the Secretary to the State Government (SSG) may have gone missing as the ‘necessary action’ to be taken by the Head of Service, as directed the SSG has since stalled while the embattled workers languish in hardship.
The workers are worried because they are yet to see any official memo backing up the governor’s executive order that reinstate and regularize them.
The workers in a memo regretted that they are presently drifting around the 27 council areas, coming to work daily but are neither captured in the payroll nor allowed to sign the attendance register.
A statement signed by Emmanuel Nnaemeka on behalf of the workers, called on Governor Hope Uzodinma to decisively intervene through executive action and end the suffering of the young employees.
The statement also urged Governor Uzodinma to find out the administrative or management staff that is behind the delay in implementing his directive and those behind the seeming disappearance of the said memo.
The statement read in part: “We were duly employed because we have records and history with the 27 local government councils in the state and the local government civil service Commission. We were duly issued offer of appointment letter (Gen. 75) which we accepted, we did our medicals which was duly documented. We were also issued notification of appointment letter (Gen. 65c) which carries details of our annual basic salary and therefore it cannot be said that we don’t have history with the local government Service Commission and we all worked for over three months under probation as required by law before we were placed on suspension for reasons unknown to us.
“We are therefore counting on Governor Hope Uzodinma as a father, to right this wrong, enforce his directive with executive dispatch and save these young employees from languishing in penury”.
It was speculated that the sudden disappearance of the said memo could be deliberate, a way of denying the affected staff of their salary, while shifting the blame on the missing memo.
Meanwhile, the situation on the payment of Imo workers monthly salary has not changed much.A visit to Imo State University on Tuesday, September 22,2020 by this reporter shows that over 100 staff of the Insititution are yet to receive their 8months salary, starting from February.
Aside these categories of staff, others who narrated how the government, through an unknown consultancy firm staggers their salary, said that they have been subjected to untold hardship leading to the death of many of them.”By Thursday, we shall be going to bury one of us.Ealier, we had done same to others, yet the government has remained indifferent, adding that the system of payment makes it frustrating as even the University management claims helpless of their plight”, the source stated.
