Published 1st Nov, 2021

By Gabriel Ogunjobi

The Nigeria Union of Railwaymen (NUR) and its sister body, Senior Staff Association for the Statutory Corporation and Government-owned Company (SC GOC), have given the Federal Government and the National Railway Corporation (NRC) a three-week ultimatum to address its welfare concerns to prevent an total industrial action across the country beginning from November 14.

These demands include an increase in the salaries of NRC staff, incorporation of life insurance and payment of promoted staff arrears from 2018 to date, among others.

According to the letter sent to Fidet Freeborn Okhiria, the Managing Director of the NRC, and Rotimi Amaechi, the Minister of Transport, the labour unions partly stated that their “agitation for enhanced salary cannot be overemphasized as it is an open secret that the salary regime of the Nigerian Railway workers is the worst and most incomprehensible of all salary structures available to the parastatals under the supervision of the federal ministry of transport”.

“The Honorable Minister of Transport once acceded to the fact that Nigerian Railway workers can easily be identified from the crowd by the way they look and dress which he meant to be strikingly suggestive of the very poor salary paid in the corporation,” the letter reads.

“It baffles us so much that the federal government spends billions of dollars on building rail transport infrastructure and transforming the system to a modern railway system but with no dint of impact or improvement in the welfare of the workers in terms of improved remuneration.

“We wonder how long the Honorable Minister of Transport will keep avoiding the railway workers and consciously failing in getting better pay for the impoverished Nigerian Railway workers. We wonder how long we will wait before we get our demand for improved salary approved just like that of National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) where workers’ salaries were recently upped by three hundred percent.”

FIJ understands that the union presented its concerns before the NRC management in August but they were ignored until the train attacks in late October.

Innocent Ajiji, the President-General of NUR, told FIJ that the ultimatum became more necessary because of the recent attacks.

“Imagine how unfortunate it would have been if our staff had died on that train during the attacks two weeks ago,” he noted. “With no insurance, the families of the staff cannot [sic] be properly compensated, yet our members risk their lives daily to keep Nigeria’s economy on the railway.”

“Our letter has been acknowledged and they have invited us for a meeting on Tuesday, November 2. If by November 14, nothing tangible is done about our demands, we will stop work across our stations nationwide.”

However, Yakub Mahmood, the Deputy Director, NRC Public Relations, denied knowledge of the letter.

“We will inform you when we receive the letter. I am not aware of what you are saying,” he said before ending the call.

Share on Social Media