No fewer than 500 health workers working with COVID19 response team in Edo State on Tuesday protested over non-payment of their allowance.
It was gathered that the protesters blocked the entrance gate to the office of the Hospital Management Board, in Benin City, the state capital.
One of the leaders of the protesters, Ojeme Emmanuel, said some of them had only collected inconsistent stipends for the number of days they worked in the month of April, adding that none of the workers had collected salary for a full month as earlier promised by the state government’s representatives.
He said, “They agreed to pay us N3,000 per day, which amounts to N90,000 per month, but none of us here have ever received such an amount of money as stipends. What we have in Edo as a government is a funny one; you can imagine a government that does not want to pay those who worked for them.
“We had over four of our colleagues right inside the isolation centre. The COVID-19 response team faced a lot of dangers. The government said they had spent over N1billion on COVID-19 but they are unable to pay those that actually did the job.”
