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Ikeja Electric Says Staff Not On Strike

The Ikeja Electric company says its staff are not on strike but are being prevented from gaining access to its facilities by labour unions. A … Continue reading Ikeja Electric Says Staff Not On Strike


Felix-ofulueThe Ikeja Electric company says its staff are not on strike but are being prevented from gaining access to its facilities by labour unions.

A spokesman for the Ikeja Electric, Mr Felix Ofulue, in an interview with Channels Television on Friday insisted that the labour unions were heavily involved in what he referred to as ‘picketing’ of the company.

“It was picketing because it was a disruptive protest. All over our facilities, they shutdown and prevented our staff from going in,” he said, denying claims that the management had asked the staff to stay away from work.

Mr Ofulue stressed that the company’s staff was not on strike.

According to him, the picketing members of the union had harped on the sacking of 400 staff of the company, a demand he said was mischievous.

He said that only 229 employees deemed to be performing below required standard were retrenched.

Dismissing claims that 400 staff were sacked he said: “Four hundred employers were not disengaged. We have over 1,000 members of this union who went through the same appraisal process that are still in the business and the unions are not talking about those ones. They have kept harping on the 229 people that have left.

“There are over 2,400 workers in that business,” Mr Ofulue said.

He said that the action of the union had made the company unable to provide electricity supply to its consumers.

But the Deputy President (south) of the National Union of Electricity Workers, Christian Omoneh, accused the management of Ikeja Electric of frustrating reconciliation moves by the civil society coalition protesting ill treatment of staff by the company.

He insisted that what was happening was not picketing, but protest and that it was not by the union.