A warning strike by the staff union of the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) began at its headquarters in Abuja yesterday. According to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), the chairman of the staff union, Ibrahim Kirfi, said that the strike was due to non-implementation of salary arrears agreement on huge disparity between the executive and non-executive staff. He then added that if the demands were not met, the strike would continue indefinitely.
Ibrahim Kirfi said that the discord between the management and staff started when former President Goodluck Jonathan announced an increase in emoluments of staff by 53.37% relativity pay. He then said that an agreement was reached that an increase in 15% and 35% would be made in favour of the executive and non-executive members.
“In February this year, we were on strike on the same issue; a meeting was called at the Ministry’s permanent secretary’ s office. At the end of the deliberation, it was agreed that the arrears be paid and the disparity would be bridged within three months.
“The termination of the three months was May 2017. Before the expiration of the three months, the union did issue a reminder to the management and also copied the permanent secretary and the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment.
“We issued another ultimatum to commence strike; this strike will have commenced June 12 but on May 31, The Minister of Labour and Productivity called for a meeting and said the needful will be done and that the planned strike be called off and we agreed.
”A committee was formed consisting of the management, union members and representative from our mother ministry, to work out modalities on how to bring solution to the pending issues.
”We initially wanted to get our money 100% but we were told after the deliberation by the management that we can only get pension as a leadway, we agreed.
“Out of 9%, we were told we can only get 5% directly and 4% will go to our pension and we still agreed for peace to reign,” Ibrahim Kirfi said.
According to him, the committee went back to the Ministry of Labour and Productivity on June 2 and that all parties agreed to the committee reports and later decided a MoU (Memorandum of Understanding) should be drafted to back up the agreement.
He said that both parties signed and the ministry of labour also signed on the ground that there would be an immediate commencement of the payment.
”They promised that on June 23, they will commence payment; since then nothing has been done on the payment of the arrears,” he added.
Now, we await the resolutions from the meeting at the Federal Ministry of Labour concerning the issue.
