National leadership of Parliamentary Staff Association of Nigeria (PASAN) has called on the Anambra Governor, Chukwuma Soludo, to urgently intervene in the ongoing misunderstanding between the state legislative arm and her members over poor working conditions.
The Association made the call during their protest at the front of the State Assembly complex Awka, on Tuesday.
Addressing members of PASAN Anambra State Chapter shortly after the protest, the National Vice President of the Association (South East zone), Pastor Comrade Promise Onwukwe, said the protest will continue until the demands of his members are met in the state.
He said the staff were protesting to push for the financial autonomy of the legislative arm of the state.
According to Onwukwe, the state governor is not aware of the poor working conditions of the Assembly staff, which enhances the protest for the governor and the entire world to know what PASAN members are going through while discharging their legitimate responsibilities.
“As I speak, the lawmakers are on plenary session now with hired corps members for an illegal legislative business, an action that is unconstitutional and unparliamentary in the history of Nigeria’s Democracy.
The lawmakers equally deployed police personnel to disrupt the solidarity, but the officers in their experience noticed the peaceful nature of the protest, then declined the request and protected us till the end of the match.
“Anambra remains the only state in South East zone where legislative staff are still earning N1000 for dressing allowance. Other allowances such as duty and hazard are yet to be implemented in the state.
“We are appealing to the governor to compel the speaker of the house, Rt. Hon Somtochukwu Udeze to emulate other speakers in the region and do the needful as so as possible for the interest of equity and fairness,” Onwukwe stressed.
Responding on behalf of the house, the Majority Leader, Hon Ikenna Ofodeme, said the protest will not prevent them from discharging their duties to the good people of Anambra.
According to him, the staff were protesting for their interest and not for the interest of the house, noting that the staff were deployed to the house by the state head of service. We have our management staff with us here including the police, Corp members, and the media.
“The Corps members they are referring to are those deployed to serve their one-year mandatory national service. They need to have the legislative experience, so we can not keep them behind the scenes, the lawmaker stated.
Nigerian Tribune gathered that the PASAN members protested with different inscriptions such as; ‘pay us our allowance budgeted since 2019’, ‘implement the agreement between PASAN‘, ‘NGF and Conference of Speakers‘, ‘implement Anambra State legislative service commission law‘, amongst others.
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