LAGOS – The Workers Rights Campaign (WRC) has condemned the exploitation and attempt to repress electricity workers’ stands at the Egbin Power Plant.
It also expressed full support for those gallant workers who, it said, had risen to resist precarious working conditions.
In a statement titled ‘We Say No To Workers Victimisation At Egbin Power Plantstop Slavery Of Workers Now’, the WRC maintained that the workers had demonstrated that they are workers and not slaves.
The statement, jointly signed by Ayemhenre Kelvin, National Coordinator, and Lai Brown, National Secretary, noted that the electricity sector had gone through a decade-long privatisation process, starting with unbundling in 2014.
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It stressed: “The biggest power generation company in the country, emerging from this, which is the Egbin Power Plant, has refused to recognise workers’ freedom to assembly and collective bargaining, which is among the 10 pillars of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) conventions, C087 and C098 on the right to Freedom of Association and Protection of the right to organise and also a gross violation to Section 40 of the CFRN 1999 as updated.
“The union has, however, been faced with difficulty in addressing the management of Egbin Power Plant for union recognition. For instance, in commemorating the Decent Work Day in 2018, Industrial Global Union Nigeria National Council wrote a petition to the then Honourable Minister of Labour, Employment and Productivity, Mr. Chris Ngige, calling the management of Egbin Power Plant to among other teething issues, address the lack of employment contract, lack of job security, long hours of work beyond statutory eight hours, nonpayment of overtime, low and uncertain wages and poor working conditions.
“This deliberate refusal and denial of workers’ rights to join the union and bargain collectively by the management of Egbin is depriving the workers of even the basic minimum workers welfare to a decent wage and social protection.
“For example, the company is yet to implement the payment of the Annual Performance incentives of 2022. The company, through its lawyers, has undermined workers through its anti-labour stance.”
The WRC said it learnt that after 10 years of the takeover of the company by Sahara Group, there had been no workers’ condition of service, no salary structure, “all of these, however, have aimed at reducing the workers to the overall goal of privatisation through neo-liberalism, trying to turn workers into modern day slaves.
