FCTA: Workers protest unpaid salaries, hazard allowances, picket Wike’s office

Abuja monument

Members of the Joint Union Action Committee on Monday, gathered at the FCT Minister’s gate to protest non-payment of salaries to staff, the prolonged FCT Primary school teachers’ strike, and the payment of wage awards to health workers.

The workers are also demanding the sack of the Chairman of the FCT Civil Service Commission, Emeka Ezeh

The PUNCH previously reported that the President of the Committee, Rifkatu Iortyer, had issued a statement on Thursday, mobilising affiliate unions to join a three-day protest from Monday the 30th of June until the 2nd of July, 2025, against the “blatant refusal of the FCT minister to address salient issues affecting staff.”

The workers sealed the premises of the Minister’s office, preventing workers from gaining entry or exit.

President of JUAC, Rifkatu Iortyer, who addressed workers during the protest, said the Wike-led FCT administration had failed to pay overhead costs, the retired members of staff who were qualified for promotion, and discrepancies in payments of salaries.

“We cannot work when overhead is not released. We held a meeting with one of them and they say is overhead not for the directors? Is that true? Is it not for working? How can somebody as high-ranking as that say that overhead is for directors? It means they don’t even know. But I want them to know that from that overhead is what we use to work. It is a recurrent for office maintenance and other things that should be used for work. But we do not have it.

“My anger is more for our members that have retired when they are supposed to be in a particular cadre since 2024. They don’t even have a chance. If you were to be an assistant director and you retired in 2024, it means they have gone with your career progression. And so they stunted you, that is the end, even when you qualified.

“Do you understand your salary every month? Today, you see this amount. Next tomorrow, you see this amount. Me, I don’t know what my salary is. And so we do not understand,” she said.