Following the intervention of some senior government officials, the National Union of Electricity Employees (NUEE) says it has suspended the less than 12 hours.
NUEE had in a notice signed by its General Secretary, Mr Joe Ajaero directed its members to embark on strike from Aug. 17, a development that had thrown the country into total blackout.
Announcing the suspension of the strike, Mr Godfrey Abah, the Federal Capital Territory Chapter Chairman of NUEE, said the action was put on hold following the intervention by the Ministers of Labour, Dr Chris Ngige, Mr Abubakar Aliyu (Power) and the Minister of State for Power, Mr Goddy Jedy-Agba, and the representative of the Head of Service.
He said other officials at the meeting called to look into their demands were the representative of the Bureau of Public Enterprise (BPE) and the management of Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN).
“All the issues were presented and a high power delegation was set up to look into the matter and report back within two weeks.
”On that premise, we decided to suspend the strike for two weeks pending when the issues will be resolved,” Abah told newsmen.
On the issue with the TCN’s Board, the union’s chairman said a letter had been written to schedule a meeting with the board in a bid to resolving it.
”You are hereby enjoined to mobilise immediately for serious picketing of TCN headquarters and stations nationwide over the directive by the TCN Board that all Principal Managers in acting capacities going to Assistant General Manager must appear for a promotion interview.
”This directive is in contravention of our Conditions of Service and Career Progression Paths and was unilaterally done without the relevant Stakeholders,” the union said.
The union also decried the failure of the authorities to pay the entitlements of former staff of the defunct Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) since December 2019.
Earlier, the Transmission Company of Nigeria had confirmed that the national grid has been shutdown following the industrial dispute by the two unions in the company.
In a statement by the TCN’s General Manager, Public Affairs, Mrs Ndidi Mbah said the grid was shut down by the unions even as effort was being made to resolve the issues.
“The incident occurred at 3:01p.m. on Wednesday after several 330kV transmission lines and 33 Kilo Volt (kV) feeder-lines across the power system network had been switched off by the members of the unions.
”This resulted in generation-load imbalance and multiple voltage escalations at critical stations and substations,” she confirmed.
She regretted that the strike came weeks after the company had just come out of national grid collapse.
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