The federal government has appealed to members of the National Union of Electricity Employees (NUEE) to suspend their planned nationwide strike.
The Minister of Labour and Employment, Dr Chris Ngige made the appeal after a five-hour closed door reconciliation meeting between its Ministry, Ministry of Power and the leadership of NUEE on Monday in Abuja.
Ngige said all parties involved had agreed to settle all issues within 60 days, saying that the agreement reached in 2019 had been reviewed.
“We have given ourselves terminal date of 60 days within which to process the remaining persons that have not gotten their severance pay.
“The number is not as what NUEE is saying but at the same time, we expect that payment should be effected latest at the end of 60 days.
“We are going to reach out to Power Generating Companies and Power Distribution Companies so that the issue of casualisation should not be happening again. We will also deal with the issue of non-remittance of check up dues and non-unionisation in some places.
”We are going to handle it as a ministry and deal with it before the end of the first quarter of the year,” he said.
The union had on January 29, 2020 issued a 14-day ultimatum to the Federal Ministry of Power to pay more than 2,000 workers that were disengaged from the defunct Power Holding Company of Nigeria or risk industrial action by electricity workers.
It also alleged that the ministry had failed to implement the agreement reached with members of NUEE, the ministry and other government agencies on December 11, 2019.
Some of the issues discussed at the Monday meeting were non-implementation of agreement signed with the union, the 14-day ultimatum, which was to come to an end on Friday, 14, and non-payment of the severance package of the over 2,000 workers.
The General Secretary, NUEE, Mr Joe Ajaero, said although the union was ready to wait for the 60 days, it was not happy that such a lengthy period was given.
He said the issues discussed at the meeting were not new since privatisation, which gave birth to majority of them was done by the Federal Government seven years ago.
