Daily Independent Online.
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Wednesday, July 21, 2004.
66 sacked Osogbo Steel plant staff face hard times
By ’Gbenga
Faturoti
Special
Correspondent,
Osogbo
Sixty-six sacked workers of the Federal
Government owned Osogbo Steel Rolling Company (OSRC) are passing through hard
times following the refusal of the
management to re-absorb them as ordered by the court.
The workers who were sacked in year 2000,
headed for court and the Federal High Court sitting in Osogbo, on July 22, 2003
ruled that they be reinstated by the management, describing the purported sack
as illegal and unconditional.
But since then, the management has not
complied with the court order and the affected workers were still roaming about
the streets with empty stomach.
The sacked workers under the aegis of Iron
and Steel Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (ISSSAN), in a statement,
appealed to President Olusegun Obasanjo to compel the management to respect the
court verdict.
The statement, which was signed by the
association’s Chairman, Mr. Rufus Oyatoro, expressed worried at the
refusal of the management to abide by the court order, saying the development
has brought an untold hardship on them.
“We try to examine why the company is
so desperate not to see our faces again when actually majority of us have
served for more than 20 years in the company and the company would not
establish any offence against anyone of us to justify our present predicament
after the court judgement that ordered our reinstatement.”
“Some of us are dead, majority are
living with empty stomach. Some members of our family have abandoned us while
our landlords have driven us out of our apartments,” the workers said.
They noted that they had written several
letters of appeal to the management without any response, adding, “If
truly the present government is actually committed to fight corruption, why
should innocent people continue to suffer while corrupt people continue to feed
fat.”
They called on President Obasanjo to
patiently look into their case with the aim of saving them from the trauma they
were passing through.
