The Democratic Socialist Movement has berated the leaderships of various workers’ unions in Osun State for not pressurizing the state government to pay workers’ salaries for the past six months.

The coordinator of the DSM in Osun State, Mr. Alfred Adegoke and his secretary, Mr. Kola Ibrahim, said this in a statement made available to our correspondent in Osogbo on Thursday.

Also, the the Centre for Human Rights and Social Justice has criticised labour leaders for fighting for their selfish interest at the expense the collective interest of the workers.

The chairman of the CHRSJ, Sulaiman Adeniyi,in a statement on Thursday said labour leaders in the state and the country at large had lost focus and were no longer protecting the interest of the workers any longer.

Adegoke said rather than engaging the government to pay the outstanding salaries, labour leaders were embroiled in succession tussle.

The DSM called on workers to put pressure on the leadership of their unions to declare strike and rallies to put the government on their toes to pay workers’ salaries.

The group said there was no reason good enough to deny workers of their salaries for the past six months while political appointees were junketing round the world.

The statement read, “We call on workers not to accept the bogey of poor allocation being bandied by the government and it’s town criers. Workers and pensioners must demand for their right to adequate and timely remuneration.

“Leadership of labour unions should be proactive in the defence of their members’ interests. The various individual industrial actions taken by some unions in the last four or five months, while commendable, shows there is need for a holistic mass action of workers across the state.

“We call on labour leaders in the state, especially the NLC, TUC and affiliate unions to declare a mass strike with mass rallies, pickets and protests across the state to demand immediate payment of workers’ salary arrears and accumulated pensions and gratuities.”

The DSM said the excuse being given by the state government that it could not pay because allocation from the federation account had been reduced drastically was not tenable.

The group said the state had been collecting allocation even if reduced but wondered what the fund was being used for.

The CHRSJ statement read, ” Union leaders in the country have derailed from their mandate by always using their platforms for selfish aggrandizement. They are always searching for worldly materials during their tenure of office and there should be an attitudinal change of the labour leaders in order to regain the lost glory of the labour union in the land.”