…As workers decry poor pay, working conditions
By Precious Oham
Ekiti State government on Tuesday declared that the contractor handling the Ring Road Project in the State, Craneburg Construction will be sanctioned for failure to comply with the Ekiti State Local Content Law.
The Director-General, Bureau of Local Content, Olalekan Ijidale stated this in Ado-Ekiti while monitoring the compliance of the law at the construction site of Craneburg Construction.
Ijidale regretted that despite concerted efforts by the Bureau to ensure that they comply with the local content law, all efforts have failed to yield positive result.
According to him, the Bureau will surely sanction the contractor which will result to 5% of the contract sum having failed to patronize 40% of Ekiti indigenes in their workforce.
His words: “It is quite unfortunate that this is our third time in this site to ensure level of compliance and at the same time, we have engaged with the contractors for more than six times in our office and workshop.
“Despite that, we discovered that the level of compliance is still very low whereby we have 38 people being engaged in the site and just five of them are from Ekiti State. It is quite low and won’t be tolerated.
‘This is the level of compliance we are trying to ensure that any project going on in Ekiti State, minimum of 40% of the contract workforce should be sourced locally. This will be a kind of renewal for economic growth and for the development of the State.
“If such a massive project can be ongoing and what we have here is 0.3% of the workforce. The three times that we have been here, there is no single time that we have seen level of compliance.
“The governor will not be happy about it because his major concern is that Ekiti people must be duly engaged in the execution of projects in Ekiti State. Craneburg Construction Ltd will be sanctioned duly and penalized.”
Meanwhile, the skilled and unskilled workers handling the Ring Road Project have accused the contractor for poor salary payment and unfavorable working conditions.
Anayo Osayi, a Crane Operator, who spoke on behalf of the aggrieved workers called on the state government to intervene to ameliorate their predicaments.
He said: “The salary is too poor and even residents of the community complained about the poor payment. If they pay us the salaries, within two days it will finish. What’s the essence of working in a construction company?
“After all, they take the money awarded for the construction to another country for investment and they will leave us to suffer. When you make your demands, they will want to blacklist you. The government should come to our aid.”