By Mustapha Aleem
The Osun State indigenous newspaper has shut the production of its newspapers but continues the online version due to the inability to pay its Workers’ salaries since September, 2015.
According to a source, who is close to the organisation, the hard copy production stopped in October, 2016.
Osun Defender, which is registered under Moremi Publishers, was said to be having a staff strength of about 20 reporters, senior reporters and editors, together with some publishers.
Another insider, who pleaded anonymity, stated that the media house, which used to have representatives, who from time to time negotiate on behalf of he staffers with the authorities in charge of the organisation over their welfare, no longer had any group that could help it pressure the concerned quarters to paying their backlog of salaries.
When asked if he was aware of the shut in operation, the source said he only visited the organisation a long time ago, since the government could not fulfil his responsibility, emphasizing it was a right step by the organisation to have shut operation.
Another one said, “I expect this to have happened a long time because we are being owed about 15 months salaries. The governor was able to play us about because we no longer have representatives, who can negotiate on our behalf. A number of staffs here have been subjected to untold hardship since the token we were collecting seized.
” I am also aware that the newspaper production stopped some four months ago but the online version was frozen before the newspaper production stopped. There was no money to run the organisation and the machines were developing faults so we had to take a step.”
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