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Labour threatens to shut ports
•Over concessioning
FRANCIS AWOWOLE-BROWNE
WITH 10,000
jobs to be erased, Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has threatened to shut down the
seaports if within one week, government fails to halt the move to privatise the
ports.
Labour alleged that the planned mass sack
was to facilitate the sale of the ports and asked the Minister of Transport, Dr.
Abiye Sekibo and the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) to shelve the move
immediately.
Indications that both labour and
government might be on a collision course emerged weekend when the Congress
threatened to mobilise workers in the maritime industry to close down the sea
ports.
The minister had last week in Abuja,
during his ministerial Press briefing, confirmed the fears of job loss if the
NPA is privatised. When he disclosed that 10,000 workers, representing 75 per
cent of the workforce, would be retrenched to pave way for the concessioning of
the ports, implying the pivatisation of certain key operational sections of the
port.
However, NLC vice-president, Mr.
Onikolease Irabor, who also doubles as the President-General of Maritime Workers
Union of Nigeria (MWUN), who gave the Congress position on the matter, said the
NLC rejected the concessionairing of the ports as being adopted by the Bureau of
Public Enterprises (BPE).
He said the NLC had written Dr. Sekibo on
the need to halt further process of privatisation of the ports in view of the
emphasis placed on massive job cut and the decision to accept wholesale, World
Bank’s insistence that the workers must be laid off while it also recommended
concessionaires to be selected by government.
Mr. Irabor said Labour had earlier
supported the port reform because it was told that the reform was only meant to
bring about effectiveness and efficiency in the NPA services and not job cut as
was being peddled now.
The NLC boss said Labour had withdrawn its
support and would frustrate the privatisation and halt the planned retrenchment.
Mr Irabor argued that his union had
documents indicating that the port privatisation and the concessioning was the
World Bank’s idea that the same bank would serve as concessionaires to be given
sections of the ports.
"Going by the document, it is as good as
saying the seaports are to be sold because even the World Bank has offered to
pay the benefits of those to be sacked.
We now have it on good authority that
government wants to carry out the sack even when they have not discussed with
Labour. This, the Minister of Transport has confirmed. We are also saying it now
without any iota of doubt that we will paralyse the entire maritime industry.
"We will shut the sea ports if government
fails to listen, we have given the minister a week to make pronouncements on the
stoppage of the privatisation.
We know how strategic the NPA is, but we
will not accept a situation where World Bank will be lording over us, with the
disclosure of the sack move, government has added fuel to the fire. There is no
where in the world where this can happen," he stressed.
The NLC Vice-president called on Nigerians
to prevail on government to reverse its steps on NPA, otherwise, the prisons
will be filled to the brim because we are aware government would not want
anything to stop activities at the ports. If there should be any sack, there are
enough laws on ground to deal with the situation," he added.
Meanwhile, government has announced a
six-man committee headed by the Minister of Finance Dr (Mrs) Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala,
to see to the reform process of the NPA soon.
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