After about three hours of meeting with Governor Abiola Ajimobi and other members of the Oyo state executive council, the Public Service Joint Negotiating Council (PSJNC), on Thursday evening, announced the shelving of its proposed strike.
The meeting held at executive council chambers saw Ajimobi delay his attendance at the day’s campaign activities to avert the strike which had been proposed to start today.
Chairman, PSJNC, Mr Emmanuel Ogundiran who made this announcement after a congress at labour house, Ibadan, premised the decision on the assurance by Ajimobi that he was not averse to giving financial backing to 2012-2016 that he approved.
He reported that Ajimobi said that the challenge he had in implementation was that figures of the cost implication of the promotion across Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) did not tally and came to him in trickles.
Ajimobi was said to have mandated the state Head of Service to collate the figures across MDAs to avoid overbilling and padding of the promotion implementation cost and report to him next Tuesday.
To this end, Ogundiran said the labour movement resolved to suspend Friday’s strike till Wednesday when both labour and government will meet again over the implementation of promotion among other issues.
Meanwhile, Ogundiran, alongside Chairman, Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Mr Waheed Olojede, had a hard time convincing members that they had not been bribed by the governor to shelve the strike.
Olojede explained that its decision not to proceed with the strike had nothing to do with collecting money from the government but that the union considered the fact that Ajimobi himself commenced negotiations with them.
He assured the workers of continued protection of their interest bearing in mind the need for union leaders to uphold their integrity.
