Minimum wage: Strike continues, adamant Enugu teachers insist

As the indefinite strike embarked upon by primary school teachers and local government workers in Enugu State enters the third week, the chairman of the state chapter of the Nigeria Union of Teachers, Theodore Odo, has said that unless government pays the minimum wage to the teachers, the strike must continue.

Odo, in an interview with journalists in Enugu on Tuesday, said, “The strike is still on.  It will go on unless they pay the minimum wage to the primary school teachers and the local government workers.”

“Primary school teachers and council workers in all the 17 local government areas have been on strike for about three weeks now because they were yet to receive their N30,000 national minimum wage two years after other civil servants in the state started earning the enhanced salary.”

Irked by the inability of the local government chairmen and the state government, the NUT and the Nigeria Union of Local Government Employees then decided to embark on industrial action.

Till this minute, neither the local government chairmen nor the state Governor, Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi, has said anything about the lingering strike.

Efforts to get the reaction of the state government were unsuccessful as the Special Adviser to the Governor on Information, Mr Steve Oruruo, who also oversees the Ministry of Information, could not be reached as his telephone line indicated that it was switched off. Punch