By Kester James
63 part-time staff members of Osun State broadcasting Corporation are still expecting their letters of appointment about 4 months after the governor, Ademola Adeleke, openly declared that they would be given jobs. Adeleke, on May 22, while unveiling new set of digital equipments for radio stations under OSBC conglomerate in Osogbo, announced automatic employment for the affected staff.
The governor in his words at the event specifically said some of the part-time staff members have spent more than 10 years at the station, earning peanut. The promise of jobs for the affected staff which was recieved with wild jubilation at the event, about four months after is yet to be fulfilled raising concerns of the affected workers and their colleagues.
Checks by this medium revealed that after Adeleke’s declaration of jobs for the workers, the management of OSBC wrote to the Office of the Head of Service to initiate the process of absorbing them. But since the letter was received in the Office of the State Head of Service in the last week of May, there has not been further communication regarding the matter. “We are scared politics may have been introduced into the matter.
The governor made a declaration since May and till now, no concrete action has been taken towards carrying out Adeleke’s directives regarding the employment for the affected staff members. “Some of them have been working as contract staff for more than 10 years. Before Oyetola, the immediate past governor, left office in Bo November, 2022, he gave full time employment to all the contract staff members in OSBC. “But when Adeleke took over, he reversed all appointment made by Oyetola towards the end of his administration.
Since then, these OSBC contract staff members have been struggling to be given permanent appointments. “They took their matter to important personalities in Adeleke’s administration, asking them to intervene on their behalf. So, when Adeleke announced it, the workers felt hardest part of the job has been done.
But since May, there has been no development regarding it and it is affecting morale of the affected staff members,” a top official in OSBC who craved anonymity told this medium. Seeking to know, why action was delayed on the appointment from sources close to the office of the Head of Service, this medium learnt, there are plans by some top officials of the Adeleke administration to add fresh names of people that were not originally part of the 63 to the list of those to employed.