Okorocha, pay us our five months salary, cry IBC workers

Staff of Imo Broadcasting Corporation, IBC, the mouth piece of the state government, has commenced a three-day warning strike to press home their demand for the payment of five months arrears of salaries.


The workers, who were operating under the canopy of Joint Action Committee, JAC, effectively sealed the Corporation’s premises, as well as hung placards that aptly depicted their grievance at the gate.

Some of the placards read: “Okorocha, pay us our five months salary”, “Okorocha, We are tired of dishing out lies via IBC channels”, “We want our salary 100%”, “We mourn our DG who died of non-payment of 5-month salary” and “Okorocha, We have reached our elastic limit”.

One of the workers, who was clutching a copy of Tueday’s Vanguard, and pointing at Yinka Odumakin’s column, fumed that the Governor’s Chief Press Secretary, CPS, Mr. Sam Onwuemeodo, had the gut to claim that all civil servants had been paid up to April.

The CPS, who was replying to an earlier piece written by Odumakin stated: “As I write, the payment of April salary has begun.

In other words, the civil servants, teachers, local government workers and so on, have been paid up to the month of April. Which means, only the month of May is outstanding, since June has not ended. We stand to be contradicted on these counter-claims”.

The aggrieved staff then asked his colleagues if it was “morally right for the CPS to mislead the public, when IBC workers and other civil servants and pensioners were suffering and dying instalmentally”.

Continuing, the staff linked their Director General’s death to the pressure arising from non-payment of their five months salary, stressing that “all we are begging government is to pay us our earned salaries”.

A unionist, who spoke to Vanguard Tuesday warned that “the workers will go back to the trenches if, by the close of work on Friday, government refuses or neglects to pay our salaries”.