About 2,604 non-indigenes disengaged from the Abia State Government Public Service have demanded their entitlements.
State government sacked the workers from Imo, Anambra, Ebonyi and Enugu states on August 25, 2011.
Addressing a press conference in Abuja on Tuesday, the representatives of the sacked workers regretted that they had not been paid their entitlements.
The press conference was organised by the Open Society Initiative for West Africa, a legal-based Non-Governmental Organisation.
Speaking on their behalf, Mrs. Rose Okafor, from Anambra State, said 67 of them had died since they were sacked.
According to her, Imo recorded the highest number of casualties with sacked while Anambra, Enugu and Ebonyi states have 607, 86 and 87 respectively.
Okafor said the sacked workers had since then gone 15 months without receiving salaries.
She said, “It is not that we don't want to go home but we are asking the Abia State Government to pay us all our entitlements.
“We have stayed without salaries for 15 months and 67 of us have died.”
According to her, the disengaged workers made representations to their governors on Tuesday to either intervene or absorb them into the public service of their own states, but the issue of the outstanding entitlements had made any intervention difficult.
“I think that is why our governors are silent – they don't want to inherit the liability,” she said.
The representative of the group from Imo State, Mrs. Mmadu-Okoli Angela, said Governor Rochas Okorocha recently announced that they would be temporarily employed in the state public service, pending the final resolution of their situation with the Abia State Government.
But she added that investigations had showed that the governor's promise might not be realistic, as there was nothing on the ground to suggest that they would be employed.
