By Giwa SHILE
The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has said more than 2,000 workers lost to insurgency in North East Nigeria were yet to get their benefits from their respective state governors.
The NLC President, Mr Ayuba Wabba, said this while speaking at the Employment and Decent Work for Peace: National Feedback meeting organised by the American Centre for International Labour Solidarity (AFL-CIO) in collaboration with the NLC on Tuesday in Abuja.
Wabba said the congress would write the affected state governors in the region to demand that workers who were killed in the region as a result of insurgency got their benefits.
He said the number of workers who lost their lives to insurgency in the region was over 2,000 put together.
Wabba said years after workers who were breadwinners for their families were killed, their families were yet to be paid their benefits.
He said teachers, local government and health workers were the most affected, stressing that orphans and widows who are victims of insurgency are merely surviving on contributions from unions.
According to him, 546 teachers, 101 health workers and six nurses have lost their lives in Borno alone since the commencement of the insurgency as at January 2016.
The labour leader said this figure was obtained from the American Solidarity Centre.
Wabba expressed disappointment that the benefits were yet to be paid to the distressed families, saying: “I am not happy that their benefits have not been paid’’.
“We have lost more than 2,000 workers, teachers, local government workers and health workers, because they are usually the first line of casualties.
“The ideology of the insurgents is that they don’t believe in western education and therefore the first person to be the victim is the teacher, because he must be at the place of work to teach the pupil,’’ he said.
According to him, most of them were killed in active service. He, however, called on all the states that were affected to give priority to the benefit of those heroes that have died in active service.
“We will write a formal demand to those governors to say that those workers that have died in active service should be paid their benefit,” the NLC president said.
