Posted by Babatunde Oke on
In an effort to end the ongoing crisis at the Ajaokuta Steel Company Limited, the Iron and Steel Senior Staff Association of Nigeria, has dissolved the caretaker committee set up to oversee the affairs of the branch.
In an effort to end the ongoing crisis at the Ajaokuta Steel Company Limited, the Iron and Steel Senior Staff Association of Nigeria, has dissolved the caretaker committee set up to oversee the affairs of the branch.
The association, in a letter with reference number ISSSAN/SEWUN/HMPS/2005/714 and addressed to the Minister of Power and Steel, Mr. Liyel Imoke, said that the decision to dissolve the committee was taken at an emergency meeting of its Central Working Committee on July 13.
Workers at the plant have been on strike since Monday.
In the letter, copies of which was sent to the managing director of the company and made available to our correspondent in Lagos on Monday, the senior staff union and its junior staff counterpart, the Steel and Engineering Workers Union of Nigeria, the crisis that has engulfed the company since June.
Trouble started three months after the take over by the new management, when the agreement for the payment of the workers salary was transferred to Global Infrastructure Nigeria Limited. The Federal Government retrenched some of the workforce and planned to pay them their terminal benefits, while the remaining workers were transferred to the new management.
According to union sources, some workers among the remaining staff demanded to be paid their terminal benefits, which included gratuity and pensions while still in service and dislodged the elected officers of the branch of both ISSSAN and SEWUN.
The workers later forced their national secretariat to recognise a joint caretaker committee under the leadership of Musa Momoh.
But the company has not known peace as the caretaker committee was bent on forcing the management to pay workers their entitlements even while still in service.
This had led to series of sit-down strikes, which later culminated in a total paralysis of the company's operations in June.
Our correspondent also gathered that the Power and Steel Minister had mediated in the crisis severally, including the recent efforts in sending a top officer of the ministry last Friday, and the traditional ruler of Okene, the Ohinoyi of Okene, to meet with the restive workers on Monday.
Meanwhile, the management of the company's said to have compiled names of the ring leaders for retrenchment in a restructuring that would sweep through the rank and file of the work-force.
The Punch, Wednesday, 20, July, 2005