Workers of Owerri North Local Government Area, have come down hard on Chief Batos Nwadike, Special Adviser, Political to Gov Hope Uzodinma describing him as blatant liar and falsehood merchant.
The workers under the umbrella of National Union of Local Government Employees, NULGE were reacting to a recent statement credited to Chief Nwadike in which alleged that the council has over seventy drivers as against five rickety vehicles belonging to it.
The Political Adviser to the governor had in a recent live program in an Owerri based radio station Hot FM ” People’s Assembly” alleged that fraudulent padding of payroll by local government officials was one of issues delaying payment of salary at that level and buttressed his position with Owerri North Council which he said has a whooping 71 drivers driving only five vehicles.
But, leaders of the union led by the branch chairman Comrade Nnorom Viclet who spoke to our correspondent noted that Nwadike’s allegations were not only false, unfounded and baseless but, a deliberate and calculated attempt to hoodwink Imo people into believing the spurious reasons being bandied by agents of the government as stalling payment of local government workers salary.
Putting the record straight the union said as at today the local government has only four drivers in payroll and not the fictitious 71 as peddled by the governor’s aide.
Owerri North NULGE further clarified that before the number dropped to four, there were nine drivers however, five of them on attaining grade level 07, which is the highest for drivers, took the compulsory conversion test as stipulated by local government service rules.
Continuing, the union pointed out that after successfully passing the test the five drivers were promoted to grade level 08 as Works Superintendents and transferred to Works Department, an action which according to it automatically removed them from the councils drivers pool.
The union queried how Chief Nwadike got his fictitious figures of 71 which it insisted is a deliberately lie contrived to paint the council black and justify the non- payment of salary to local government workers.
The union, therefore, called on Gov Uzodinma call Chief Nwadike and his like in his administration to order because their actions and utterances are capable of portraying his government in bad light before Imo people.
It regretted that instead of winning the confidence of the people through sincere actions and utterances aides and appointees of the governor were rather doing the contrary thereby putting the administration’s reputation at stake.
Owerri North NULGE appealed to the governor to look into this unbecoming and unwholesome tendency before it drags the integrity and name of the government in the mud.
