WORKERS in the country are an endangered specie. They work themselves to the bones only for a few people to reap from their sweat. They work like elephants but eat like ants. The lot of the worker is nothing to write home about. Virtually all employers treat workers with disdain. They pay them peanuts and in most cases, this pay is delayed. Where it is not delayed, the workers are owed for months. At times, the salary arrears may be in years.
Though they work for the good of their organisations, workers do not know good times. Things are always tough for them. They anxiously look forward to the end of the month, but when it comes, there is nothing to take home. The take home pay, which cannot take them home, is simply not there for their collection, yet it is month end. Workers are the butt of jokes at home and in many other circles. People look at them and take pity on them – a hardworking man, which has been rendered redundant by the system.
The system is not helping matters; it is also guilty of the offence that it should do something about. In the past, it was unheard of for government to owe workers. This was why many scrambled for job in the civil service. They knew that once they are employed, their future is guaranteed. No matter what, they are assured of their salary and promptly too. And they had job security. Again, chances of rising to the top were also there. We have heard of messengers rising to the directorate cadre and even becoming permanent secretary after obtaining the requisite qualification. That was the beauty then of working in the civil service.
Painfully, this beauty has been replaced with ashes. Today, some workers are cursing the day they joined the civil service. They are wondering whether it is the same service they joined years ago where they were paid promptly and had all the facilities to discharge their duty. In their subconscious minds, they compare what things were then with what they are now. They yearn for the good old days; but will the old order return? The emerging new order of owing workers’ salary should not be encouraged at all because of its inherent dangers.
As the citadel of bureaucracy, the civil service should be employer of example. It should be the compass for other employers to find their way. But if it owes salary as is the case in some states today, it will have no moral justification to talk if those in the private and other sectors do not pay their workers as when due. Or maltreat their workers as some Chinese, Lebanese and Indian firms do. These employers can so behave because those who should call them to order are no better. Can a governor who has failed in his obligations to civil servants summon an Indian or Chinese or a Lebanese firm’s chief executive for maltreating his Nigerian worker? The answer is no.
These Indian, Lebanese and Chinese firms are killing our compatriots in installment and the government does not give a care in the world. The workers are mostly categorised as casual – that is they are not permanent staff with rights and privileges. They are only entitled to their meagre salary. The salary cannot meet their own personal expenses not to talk of taking care of family needs. To keep these workers permanently under, these firms put some Nigerians in top positions to do the dirty job of defending the indefensible for them. Whenever things go wrong as they often do in these companies, these Nigerian executives are the ones to clear the mess.
They do the job without shame. Where the company is at fault, they blame it on the workers, describing them as a bunch of illiterates who ran into problem because they could not interpret simple instructions. To them, their companies are always right even when they are wrong. So, when a worker is electrocuted, he is at fault; when a machine severs his limb, he is to blame; when a heavy object falls on his head and he dies, he is careless and when there is a fire and he suffers first degree burns, he was not vigilant enough. This is the sad story of the worker, who toils, but gets no just reward. He toils for his bosses to be better off.
Can we blame these foreigners for taking us for granted in our own country, where they are making a killing? But all this wealth does not reflect in their workers’ lives. What is galling is that they dare not do the things they do here in their home countries. They fear the laws of their countries and their leaders. Over there, workers are treated as kings. So, why can’t they replicate that here? They will only start doing that if our leaders change their way by treating workers with respect. You respect a worker when you pay his salary promptly; you respect a worker when you provide a conducive working environment for him. A worker should not only be good enough to bake the cake, he should also be good enough to eat in the cake.
Thank God that President Muhammadu Buhari has come to the aid of states owing salaries with a N713 million bailout. This portrays him as a caring father. The president does not want the workers, who are his children to suffer through no fault of theirs. The money has come as a respite for the states. We only hope that they will use it strictly for paying workers’ salaries. As the labour movement said on Tuesday ‘’…Mr President should please prevail on the governors to ensure that when they get the money they should not blow it on other things’’.
To do that will show the governors for who they truly are – callous, inhuman and without feeling for the suffering of others. And they should start thinking of how to generate funds to pay their workers without fail because it is not every time they are in crisis that they will run to the president for a bailout.
NATION
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Beautiful piece but its unfair that its only Aregbe’s pix that’s been used when it comes to unpaid workers’ it’s becoming a stigma(though i like the fact its the Nation doing because of the connection)…….Mr President has a lot to address because its not only Boko Haram that’s our issue,the issues raised in paragraphs 5&6 should be looked into because some times it’s not to work than to work in such horrible conditions.The Nigerians who do such dirty jobs for the foreigners should cover their heads in shame…….I think the bottom line is like Uncle Jimi always says we need a new moral code and i think we sholud start from having value for human life because in this country we don’t value human life.