THERE seems to be an escalation in the industrial disharmony in Cross River Street as street sweepers in Calabar, Cross River State capital staged a demonstration Wednesday demanding the payment of over six months of arrears of their N7,000 monthly stipend owed by the state government.
The street sweepers, working under the Calabar Urban Development Authority (CUDA), majority of whom are widows, marched through the streets of Calabar to the governor’s office where they tendered the demand for the payment of their N7,000 per month stipend which will have accumulated for seven months by the end of October.
The angry women said they used their own monies to buy their working tools said they tricked by the Commissioner for Environment, Mfon Bassey, as well as their supervisor, Eno Edem.
They marched from the Efio-Ette Roundabout down to Murtala Mohammed highway. At the old Secretariat complex in Calabar, truckloads of police personnel blocked the peacefully protesting women and fired teargas to disperse them when they were about to take their demonstration into the old Secretariat complex.
National Record gathered that the sweepers wake up as early as 4am daily to start sweeping the streets of Calabar, a situation which has made the state capital renown as one of, if not, the neatest city in Nigeria.
Among other hazards they suffer include exposure to hoodlums who sometimes dispose them of their belongings; victims of hit-and-run, and some are sexually harassed or even raped.
