BY VICTOR AHIUMA-YOUNG

LAGOS — ORGANISED labour in the nation’s Power sector, has written to the Federal Government intimating it of its plan to commence indefinite strike from Wednesday, to protest alleged breach of agreements and alleged personal agenda being pursued by the Power Minister.

In a letter to the Federal Government through Minister of Labour and Productivity, Chief Emeka Wogu, National Union of Electricity Employees, NUEE, and Senior Staff Association of Electricity and Allied Companies, SSAEAC, cited the recent compulsory retirement of three top executives of the Power Holding Company of Nigeria, PHCN, including the General Manager, Human Resources, under questionable reasons among the perceived excesses of the minister.

In a joint letter, Joe Ajaero  and Abiodun Ogunsegha, General Secretary of NUEE, and General Secretary of  SSAEAC respectively, listed unpaid 50 per cent salary increase, regularisation of casuals, staff biometric verification exercise, winding down of corporate headquarters of PHCN and sack of top executive officers of PHCN as part of their grievances.

The letter read in part: “All agreements reached at the ongoing negotiation with the Federal Government team and the labour unions, under the chairmanship of Comrade Hassan Sumonu were lopsidedly implemented, bringing severe pains to our members.

“While it took the ministry/management of PHCN six months after a signed agreement to commence implementation of this head of agreement, payments up till this moment is done piecemeal.  The payments in the distribution companies are done in batches, old salary at a time and the 50 per cent at another time.

In most cases, the 50 per cent increase batch has fallen into arrears of more than three months. All attempts to prevail on the ministry and management of PHCN to capture the increase on the old and pay once had fallen on death ears.

“It was agreed during the first round of negotiations that ended in May 2011 that casuals in PHCN be regularised and integrated into employment. This issue had been badly handled by BPE which engaged the services of a consultant to conduct biometric verification on the casuals.

“Up till this moment, several of the casuals are yet to receive their letters of regularization. Despite the fact that there was no agreement reached on verification of regular staff, the ministry mandated staff to submit themselves for verification, for which the union encouraged them to do.

However, several of staff names who were at their duty posts during verification and took part in the exercise were missing from the list compiled by the consultant.  Those whose names were not included in the consultant’s list were directed not to be paid salaries. Some staff remained without being paid salaries since December 2011.

“It was agreed in the last negotiation that the corporate headquarters of PHCN would only be wind down after the liquidation process of PHCN is completed, when the entity is finally wind up. This was the agreement reached in our meeting of February, 2012.

However, the action of the minister recently had negated the content and spirit of the agreement.  The Minister had insisted that those that were transferred from the corporate headquarters be paid purportedly from the station where they were transferred and the LPC raised be sent in favour of the stations.  This is in flagrant disrespect to a duly signed agreement.”

They added that “We decided to bring these matters to your attention and inform you that if these severe violations are not addressed by April 11, 2012, we shall be left with no option than to inform our members to stay out of their duty post.”