Aggrieved Nigerian Union of Railway (NUR) Workers have insisted on embarking on a three-day warning strike from November 18 to 20 over issues pertaining to their salaries.
The NUR President, Innocent Ajiji, announced this on Sunday.
According to Ajiji, Rotimi Amaechi, Minister of Transportation, has never took their demand for a salary upgrade seriously despite making appeals for a long time .
The NUR President said the union representatives have met with the minister on several occasions and the response from him has been that the president has travelled out and he is the only one who can approve the salary upgrade.
He said: “The meeting ended in a deadlock and what we mean by that is that we went for the meeting with an expectation that the minister will give us a cheering news that the President has approved our agitation for increased salary structure and allowances.
“We’ve been struggling for this purpose since early this year. Last year it was included in the budget proposal of the railway that there should be an enhanced salary structure but the National Assembly struck it off.
“So we lost it last year, which was in the proposal for this year. When we saw that we lost it we now decided to start the struggle all over again. About five months ago the minister demanded that we should come up with a proposal.
“Fortunately this time round the managing director of the Nigeria Railway Corporation successfully organised a meeting between us and him (Amaechi).
“And when he came we were hoping to hear that he had met with the President. This is because it is only the President who can approve the salary structure. So we expected him to tell us the level of the matter after meeting the President.
“”But what we heard from him is that the President has traveled out of Nigeria and hopefully he will be back by next week and when he returns efforts will be made to see him to discuss our matter.”
“So it means that all these months that we’ve been expecting to hear from the minister no effort was made at all on our issue. This is why we cannot withdraw the three-day warning strike. So the meeting ended in a deadlock.”
