Cross River SSG held hostage by street sweepers and gardeners,demand unpaid allowance

Secretary to Cross River State Government, Mrs Martina Agbor, was  yesterday  held hostage by street sweepers and gardeners at the Calabar Urban Development Authority, CUDA, when she went  there to take inventory of the Authority’s vehicles.

According to Vanguard, Mrs Agbor who had a scheduled meeting with the Executive Secretary, Mr. Joemary Ekeng Ita, arrived the sanitation office located on Ibrahim Babangida Way in the state capital, to get details of the capacity of the authority to clean up the state capital which was filled with trash.

On seeing Mrs Agbor, about 500 workers in the agency mobilised and waited patiently while she was shown round the premises.
After the inspection, as she was about to leave, the angry workers who allegedly had not been paid their N5,000 allowances for seven months, surrounded her and demanded their unpaid allowances before she would be allowed to leave the premises.

She was held up in her car until a detachment of the Police came to take her out of the premises.
Reacting on the incident, the SSG said the government was not owing the workers, rather it was the contractors handling the evacuation of refuse in the state capital that owed them.
She said:

“They are saying that government owes them and I ask, owe you, how?  Look at the books, they have over 200 workers and yet the town is still dirty. What do we owe them for? Who are those that have been working? That was what brought me here,” she said.