Sacked workers lament 62 months unpaid salaries

The workers, numbering 447, were staff of Olamaboro Local Government Education Authority, before they were laid off in September 2010, during the Ibrahim Idris administration.
The then Commissioner for Education, Chief Sylvester Onoja, who set up the committee that retrenched the staff, was said to have carried out the exercise without recourse to the State Universal Basic Education Board, which is the supervisory parastatal.
In the petition written to the commission, the affected workers said they were indiscriminately relieved of their jobs without any official letter to back up the action.
The workers, most of who claimed to have spent over 20 years in service, said they merely saw their names on the notice board.
The petition noted that the affected workers approached an Okpo High Court which gave a judgment on  June 7, 2011 in their favour. The court also directed the state government to pay salaries of the affected workers but the state government neither obeyed the order nor appealed the judgement.
 It was gathered that the same High Court, when the order was not complied with,  issued an order of enforcement on February 28, 2012, compelling the state government to obey its judgment, but nothing was done.
When the case came up for hearing yesterday at the commission, only SUBEB officials among the government officials invited turned up.
SUBEB agreed that the staff were unjustifiably sacked, but that it is only the state government that can give directive for the payment of the affected staff.