Zamfara remediation: Workers demand hazard allowance

The Minister of Environment, Mrs Hadiza Ibrahim Mailafia recently addressed a press conference where she announced that the remediation aspect of the Federal Government intervention in the village had been completed.ControversyBut controversy is currently brewing in Zamfara where employers of the Zamfara State Environmental Sanitation Agency drafted to carry out the remediation are crying foul […]

The Minister of Environment, Mrs Hadiza Ibrahim Mailafia recently addressed a press conference where she announced that the remediation aspect of the Federal Government intervention in the village had been completed.
Controversy
But controversy is currently brewing in Zamfara where employers of the Zamfara State Environmental Sanitation Agency drafted to carry out the remediation are crying foul over the inability of the Federal Ministry of Environment to pay them ‘hazard’ allowance.
The workers, mostly in their 30s said that some of their colleagues involved in the remediation exercise were hospitalised as a result of lead poisoning they suffered while undertaking the remediation.
The crew managers, as the workers are called, said that they were drafted to carry out the remediation as a result of their skill, expertise and knowledge in such dangerous assignment but regretted that after carrying out the exercise, the ministry abandoned them to their fate,  without paying them their due entitlement.
They are demanding for the payment of N17 million for 22 crew managers at N198,533.00 per month for three months.
Their demand, they said was based on approved United Nations hazard payment for workers who undertake hazardous job, such as that in Bagega.
 “At the completion of the remediation, no test was carried out on us to show the level of exposure, contamination or impact that the lead had on us. Now as a result of personal tests we did, we found that we are all infected with lead poison, some of us are already becoming weak and lack the energy to attend to family responsibilities,” said Abubakar Mohammed, one of the managers.
“The minister was in Bagega to see for herself the work we did and while there, she promised us that we will be paid hazard allowance due to the hazardous nature of what we are doing. We are reliably informed that provision was made for our allowance in the work budget, so we are surprised that the ministry is holding on to the money even as we are dying,” he added.
Comrade Mohammed Saleh, another crew manager said that apart from undertaking the remediation, the crew managers also trained about 15 staff of the Federal Ministry of Environment on how to handle the remediation exercise.
“The people who participated in the remediation with us from the United States were paid hazard allowances. They did nothing, only supervising. We who did the entire job have been denied our legitimate right,” Saleh said.
Defence
The Ministry of Environment while reacting to the demands of the crew managers said that it was not the responsibility of the Federal Government to pay staff of Zamfara State government.
According to a source at the ministry, what the crew managers are demanding is not contained in Nigeria’s Public Service Rule nor the financial regulation that guides federal government operations.
The source which did not wish to be named said that the ministry did not engage anybody directly for the remediation as that responsibility was purely left for the state government.
 “Operations of all federal ministries are based on laws of the federal republic, so quoting a United Nations hazard allowance for us to pay for a job we did not give out is something I don’t understand,” the source added.
No end in sight
The Zamfara State Commissioner for Environment, Alhaji Mukhtar Lugga speaking on the issue said he had made over four trips to Abuja to get the federal ministry to pay the workers their due but that his pleas had gone unheeded.
Lugga also said that the project vehicles and other tools used for the remediation were taken away by the ministry, making it impossible for the state to monitor developments at Bagega especially at the site where the evacuated soil from the village was buried.
“We are aware that the allowances the workers are asking for are contained in the remediation budget, so if the workers are not paid then who takes the money,” he asked.