The Nigerian Telecom sector is at risk of shutdown as workers under the union of Private Telecommunications and Communications Senior Staff Association have fully began a strike action.
The union had previously, on Monday, threatened to cripple telecommunications services nationwide.
Okonu Abdullahi, the Secretary-General had revealed the commencement of the strike action via a statement on Monday.
He also emphasised how the union’s members were over 800 people, working at various Nigeria telecoms company facilities, network centers and other critical telecommunications, including IHS and Huawei.
What They’re Saying
Abdullahi had said;
“The union, among other things, is demanding the reinstatement of some of its sacked workers, recognition of the union, improved working conditions, and remittance of membership dues.
“The strike has become inevitable because of the prevalent precarious working conditions our members are enduring in the sector, the refusal of the employers to recognize and respect the constitutional right of these workers to freely associate with the union, and the unjust sack of three members of the union,” he stated in the seven-day strike notice.
“The implications of the strike will be massive because we have told all our members not to respond to any service outage from our employers.
“The fact remains that there are outages every day, and if our engineers do not respond to those outages, subscribers in those areas will be affected,” he said.
Meanwhile, Gbenga Adebayo, the Chairman of the Association of Licensed Telecom Operators of Nigeria, had in reaction to the development, said that the group was unknown to its members (including MTN, Globacom, Airtel, 9-mobile and other telcos in the country).
“This group is not known to us in ALTON, and the companies mentioned are not members of ALTON”, he declared.
