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The organised labour in Ebonyi on Thursday boycotted the inauguration of a 90-Unit housing estate, called “Workers Village”.
The union hinged the boycott on the alleged non-inclusion of its members in the allocation by the Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria (FMBN).
The estate is located at Ugwuachara, on the Old Enugu Expressway, Abakaliki.
Speaking on the development at a news briefing, the state Chairman of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Mr Ikechukwu Nwafor, decried the way workers were being treated in the state.
Nwafor called on the State and Federal Governments to direct FMBN to review the allocation and ensure that the state workers benefited.
“This is a project the NLC, Trade Union Congress and National Employers’ Consultative Association built with workers’ monthly contributions.
“And now it is my time to benefit from the project and you decide to exclude me. That is not fair.
“I have asked the developers to tell me one single worker that benefited from the allocations but none was mentioned.
“We have boycotted the inauguration, let them go ahead,” Nwafor said.
He said that labour decided to boycott the inauguration to show their disaffection over the exclusion of workers from the allocation.
According to him, FMBM invited the organised labour to the inauguration and also pay some amount to own those buildings
“The project is today inaugurated but we discovered with dismay that the buildings have been sold and no worker from the state benefited.
“We have approached the FMBN management and were told frankly that the buildings have been sold off.
“We were also told that Ebonyi people were not coming forth when they were selling them,” Nwafor said.
“We are calling on the Federal Government to verify the process by which the houses were sold and reverse the sales in the interest of justice.
In a reaction, Mr Kingsley Chukwuma, the Executive Director, Business, Development and Portfolio Management of FMBN, said that the partnership between the bank and labour made the project a reality.
Chukwuma said that the project comprised three and two bedroom bungalows.
He said that everyone was carried along during the allocation but was silent on whether any worker benefitted.
“Actually, this project is for the Nigerian workers and this is part of their monthly contributions and a lot of beneficiaries have been packaged.
“It is a kind of affordable housing designed for workers, especially the civil servants,” Chukwuma said. (NAN)
