Disengaged NITEL workers besiege BPE
Disengaged NITEL workers yesterday besieged the BPE headquarters in Abuja to protest the delay in payment of their three-month gratuities and pensions.
The NITEL workers barred all visitors and staff of the agency from entering or going out of the premises.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that traffic was held up in front of the BPE office for several hours as the angry workers also closed the Ibrahim Badamasi Way, forcing motorists to divert into adjourning roads.
The workers, who were mobilised from various states to protest the delay in payment of their gratuities and pensions, spread blankets and mats in front of the office to show their readiness to spend the night within the premises.
The workers had on arrival attempted to enter the BPE premises, but the management had already mobilised armed mobile policemen to ward them off.
NAN reports that the angry workers chanted solidarity songs for hours and resorted to prayers and curses on the BPE for delaying their entitlements.
The Director General of the BPE, Mrs Irene Chigbue, had promised to pay the entitlements owed the workers by November last year, but the privatisation agency later decided to graduate the payment.
The BPE in conjunction with the Ministries of Labour, Finance and Communication had agreed to pay all the workers five years pensions, but the agency later graduated the pensions into two, three and four years.
The BPE had explained that the graduation of the payment was based on length of service in the premier telecom company.
The NITEL workers rejected the graduation of the pensions, insisting that the BPE had breached an agreement that was signed by the three ministers and the NITEL union before the handing over of the company to Transcorp International.
The workers started their protest march from the NITEL headquarters in Abuja where they chanted solidarity songs and called for support from their former colleagues still in service.
The Human Resources Manager of NITEL, Alhaji Abubakar Hassan, told the protesting workers that the BPE had already concluded arrangements to pay their gratuities while looking for money to settle the pension.
Hassan said that the BPE would require N69 billion to pay both the gratuity and pension to all the affected workers, but it had only N59 billion in its coffers.
He said that the federal government would make up for the N10 billion shortfall, pointing out that the three ministries had started discussion on how to source for the shortfall.
NAN reports that the angry workers rejected the explanation by the human resource manager and insisted he followed them to the BPE.
The chairman of the disengaged workers, Elias Kazzah, had earlier implored the workers to show maturity in their demands, insisting that the cheque must be signed and issued before they would vacate the premises.
Kazzah said that the disengaged workers had suffered enough hardship in paying their rents, feeding their families and setting themselves up in other businesses because of the delay.
He said that the workers would not return to their homes until the BPE met their demand of paying all their gratuities and pension .
The Human Resources Manager later met with some officials of the BPE while the other workers chanted solidarity songs and spread their mats to wait for their cheque.