THE two-day warning strike by civil servants in Ekiti State began yesterday with most of the workers staying away from work as directed by the state's councils of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and Trade Union Congress (TUC).

But the state government has condemned the strike, alleging that it was a product of union leaders' conspiracy with opposition parties in Ekiti.

It also warned yesterday that any worker who failed to report for work today would be deemed absent without authorisation and punished accordingly.

Most government offices were closed yesterday as the workers observed the warning strike to demand prompt payment of salaries and allowances, as well as overdue promotion.

Also affected by the strike were public primary and secondary schools, with pupils in boarding schools asked to leave the hostels for their homes.

The Commissioner for Information and Civic Orientation, Taiwo Olatunbosun, who went round to assess the effectiveness of a directive by the state Public Service Joint Negotiation Council that workers should shun the strike, commended the few employees who turned up for work, noting that many were not allowed access to their offices by their union leaders.

He described the strike as unpopular and not in the interest of the state and the workers, arguing that the NLC and TUC did not exhaust all avenues to negotiate with the state government on their grievances.

Meanwhile, the Ekiti leaderships of the NLC and TUC have commended the workers for observing the two-day warning strike, saying that no amount of government blackmail and harassment would make them to back out of the action.

Olatunbosun said: "No reasonable workforce would embark on strike at this critical period when the entire world is battling economic recession".

He claimed that the union leaders who ordered the strike were acting the script of the opposition who had allegedly sworn to make the state ungovernable for the Governor Segun Oni.

The commissioner described the strike order as "a military fiat issued dictatorially on innocent workers in the state for selfish reasons".

He said the unions did not form a quorum at the meeting where they decided to go on strike because workers had lost confidence in their leadership.

Olatunbosun claimed that the National Union of Local Government Employees (NULGE) and other mainstream public service unions have dissociated themselves from the "unpopular call for strike" and wondered whose interest the NLC and TUC actually represented.

He said the state government was aware that the opposition parties were working in collaboration with a former governor of the state who allegedly induced NLC and TUC chairmen at clandestine meetings they held at Ikere Ekiti and Ibadan to subvert the Oni administration.

The commissioner alleged that the Ekiti Chairman of TUC, Ralph Olaiya, was particularly against the state government because the latter refused to pay the N5 million ransom demanded by his abductors some months ago when the union leader was kidnapped in Ikole.

But a joint statement by Mr. Joseph Arogundade of the NLC and Olaiya, they described Ekiti workers as "determined people who have decided to take their destiny in their hands in the face intimidation and threat of sack."

They urged the workers "not to relent in their determination to liberate themselves from anti-workers government."