The Ogun State Government said the three-day warning strike embarked upon by civil servants in the state, on the order of Joint Negotiation Council, caught the authority by surprise.
The Head of Service, Modupe Adekunle, told journalists on Tuesday that the government was not notified.
She explained that the state government was facing challenges paying the deductions because of the sharp fall in the allocations accruing to the state.
Ms. Adekunle stated that the state government was looking for means of raising funds to settle the deductions.
She, however, expressed hope that the deductions would be paid before the week runs out.
The strike, which commenced on Tuesday, crippled all government activities in all the state ministries and parastatals.
The leadership of the Joint Negotiation Council monitored if workers complied with the order, as all the workers stayed away from office.
The chairman of the Council, Modiu Bello, had stated that the warning strike became necessary because the state government reneged on the agreement reached on the leadership of the labour on February 20, 2015. The government had reached an agreement with Labour to pay the four months deduction owed.
Mr. Bello noted that the state government reneged on the agreement and went on air to announce that it has paid February salary to give the impression the administration is not owing any salary.
The labour leader disclosed that currently the Governor Ibikunle Amosun-led government is owing the workers five months unpaid cooperative deductions and 29 months of unpaid pension deductions.
He said the state government had defaulted in paying its own counterpart funding of the pension deductions and had not remitted the fund to the pension managers.
In another development, the Chairman of Nigeria Union of Teachers, Dare Ilekoya, said the Teachers’ Union did not follow the NJC directive because it doesn’t belong to the state union.
He explained that if Nigeria Labour Congress had given the directive, the NUT would have joined the strike.
Meanwhile, teachers of public secondary schools stayed away from work as students were seen returning home in the morning when the discovered that their teachers were absent from work.
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