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PHEDC workers will strike every month – Ajaero

By on September 1, 2015

Electricity workers in Port Harcourt have threatened to continue with industrial action every month till the issues affecting workers’ welfare are resolved by the management of the Port Harcourt Electricity Distribution Company.

While addressing journalists in Lagos at the weekend, the General Secretary, National Union of Electricity Employees, Joseph Ajaero, said that if the short-changing and indiscriminate sacking of workers in the company continued, the next strike would spread to other electricity distribution companies in the country.

He said that the last industrial action, which led to power outage in Rivers, Cross River, Bayelsa and Akwa Ibom states, was stopped after four days when the state police and the State Security Service waded in.

According to him, other electricity companies allow industrial relations but PHEDC management has been averse to it.

He said, ”But if what they did was to deceive us to call off the strike, that action will resume in Port Harcourt and if SSS gets closer to it again, we will escalate this nationwide, because I have not seen their role in industrial and labour relations.

“Don’t be surprised if every month we shut down the place if this is not resolved. The 18 succession companies have disdain for unions, but at least there is union-management relationship. Though we don’t agree on a lot of issues, we meet and discuss but PHEDC does not want to discuss. The next time we are biting them, we are going to bite them hard. This one is just an example.”

“They can’t just wake up and sack people. They can’t just operate without conditions of service in a country like this. What worsened it was that though a 14-day ultimatum was issued, the SSS got hold of it, invited the union and the management to a meeting but the management refused to come.”

Ajaero explained that the unfair practices had been going on two years since the privatisation of the power companies but the union had desisted from taking action.

He added, “Someone who was receiving N150, 000 before was paid N30,000 and when they complain, you sacked them. The management sacked about 33 of them. They sack without discussion with the union. That impunity has to stop.

“Before now we kept quiet because when the new investors took over, Nigerians had expected that we were going to fight them because we opposed privatisation. If we had started protesting immediately, they would have said we were sabotaging them. We allowed them to stabilise after two years. But rather than stabilising in terms of improvement in power, they are stabilising in terms of destroying the workers. And we can no longer take this.”

 

[Punch]