Zamfara recruitment: 1,400 graduates demand 60 months unpaid salaries, other benefits

The 1,400 graduates recruited by Zamfara state government since May 2014 have demanded for their salaries and other entitlements 60 months after the said recruitment.

The civil servants under the aegis of May 2014 Civil Servants Forum led by their chairman, Lukman B. Majidadi, at a press conference on Thursday said for the past five years, most of them have had to live a life of uncertainty as a result of the total neglect they suffered in the hands of Zamfara state government.

“After series of processes which included written and oral interviews and verifications, a total of 1,351 young persons were cleared out of 8,000 applicants and were issued notification letters and posted to various MDAs, in April 2014 but since then, not a single Kobo was given to us as salaries.

“Since we were not given any letter of termination of appointment, we still feel we are bonafide workers and as such, all our entitlements must be paid.

“We also feel that the recruitment was frustrated by the ‘powers that be’ because they felt sidelined in the recruitment process because their favourites were not included as demanded by them,” Majidadi alleged.

He said most of their members who were trained as nurses, lawyers accountants, educationists and so on were left with no option than to take up menial jobs such as shop attendants and commercial motorcycle riders to earn their livelihoods “because we come from less privileged families.”

He therefore called for immediate payment of all their outstanding liabilities by the government as well as the support of all well-meaning indigenes of Zamfara state and other Nigerians to ensure that justice is done on the matter.

When contacted, the state’s Head of Service, Alhaji Muhammad Mujtaba Isah, said the 1,400 recruited workers were not put on payroll because of dispute between the ministry of finance and the committee that carried out the recruitment process headed by the then chairman of state’s Civil Service Commission, Alhaji Ahmad Zabarma.

“Even though I was not the head of service when the recruitment took place at that time, we had another recruitment in 2018 and told them that any of their members should come for automatic employment and they did come. So as far as we are concern, the matter pertaining to the 1,400 is dead. It is closed,” he said.