FOR
the second time in two months, cadets of the Youth Empowerment Scheme
of Oyo State (YES-O), on Monday, staged a peaceful protest over the
non-payment of their monthly allowance.
Speaking with newsmen at the Secretariat, where the protest was held, the cadets decried the replacement of their names by ghost names and those who never participated in the induction training held in February.
The protesters, who did not want their names in print, said the state government, which was supposed to pay them four month allowance arrears of N10,000 each, pleaded with them for understanding and agreed to pay from last month, instead of backdating the payment to December, when they were engaged by the government.
More shocking for the YES-O participants, who were mostly deployed in the Environmental and Solid Waste, was that on getting to the bank where the one month allowance was said to have been paid, their names were replaced with those who did not participate in the scheme.
The leader of the protesters alleged that one official in the Ministry of Environment told him that the “YES-O participants nominated by commissioners and politicians could not wait for others to be deployed before they would be allotted slots in the scheme.”
Reacting to the allegation, one of the coordinators of the scheme and Deputy Chief of Staff to the governor, Mr Abimbola Adekanmbi, said all the posted cadets had been fully paid, though there was an initial hiccup arising as a result of ways of writing their names.
On the alleged substitution of names, Adekanmbi said government would investigate the matter and get to its root, adding that Governor Abiola Ajimobi had never handed down any list of cadets to the coordinating unit of the scheme, let alone any of his commissioners.
Speaking with newsmen at the Secretariat, where the protest was held, the cadets decried the replacement of their names by ghost names and those who never participated in the induction training held in February.
The protesters, who did not want their names in print, said the state government, which was supposed to pay them four month allowance arrears of N10,000 each, pleaded with them for understanding and agreed to pay from last month, instead of backdating the payment to December, when they were engaged by the government.
More shocking for the YES-O participants, who were mostly deployed in the Environmental and Solid Waste, was that on getting to the bank where the one month allowance was said to have been paid, their names were replaced with those who did not participate in the scheme.
The leader of the protesters alleged that one official in the Ministry of Environment told him that the “YES-O participants nominated by commissioners and politicians could not wait for others to be deployed before they would be allotted slots in the scheme.”
Reacting to the allegation, one of the coordinators of the scheme and Deputy Chief of Staff to the governor, Mr Abimbola Adekanmbi, said all the posted cadets had been fully paid, though there was an initial hiccup arising as a result of ways of writing their names.
On the alleged substitution of names, Adekanmbi said government would investigate the matter and get to its root, adding that Governor Abiola Ajimobi had never handed down any list of cadets to the coordinating unit of the scheme, let alone any of his commissioners.
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