5th January, 2016
Femi Adi/Kaduna
Disengaged casual staff of Kaduna Electricity Distribution Company, KAEDCO on Tuesday blocked the entrance gate of the company in protest of their three months outstanding salaries and unlawful disengagement.
The protesting staff carried placards with inscriptions such as “Baba Buhari please reverse sale of PHCN now”, “KAEDCO casual calling on FG. to intervene over unpaid entitlements”, “You,ve failed your part of the deal, pay us KAEDCO”.
They also called on President Muhammadu Buhari to reverse the sale PHCN.
Leader of the casual staff, Ahmed Mohammed said the management of Kaduna Electric Company must pay all the salaries owed them without any delay.
According to Mohammed, 960 casual staff were disengaged and pushed out for no reason.
“This is unfair for KAEDCO to send us into labour market without paying us,” he said.
He said he can’t understand why the management that had agreed to pay the three months owed suddenly refused on grounds that the casual staff were never engaged by KAEDCO.
He, however, said since it appeared that the management of KAEDCO cannot cope with pressure and demand to deliver on its promises made before taking over PHCN, the sale of the company should reversed.
To back up their demand, the want a reverse of PHCN sale.
“We have a copy of the court order stopping the sale of PHCN and reversing to status quo, so we urge Federal government to enforce the order,” Mohammed stated.
Meanwhile, in a chat with the Head ,Corporate Communications of KAEDCO, Abdulazeez Abdullahi said there is nothing such as casual staff union and so the protest was illegal.
Abdullahi, who later admitted that the protesting former casual workers were never engaged by KAEDCO, said they were staff of defunct PHCN.
However, he explained that out of compassion, when they piled pressure on the KAEDCO management to pay them, 396 staff were paid.
He also revealed that still out of compassion, the new management equally employed 200 of the casual staff.
On the issue of court order, he said as far as KAEDCO management is concerned, BPE knew about the court order before PHCN was sold, “so it is not a problem that should bother the new management.”