Telecom Services Risk Shutdown as Workers Embark on Strike

Nigeria’s telecom sector is at risk of shutdown as workers under the aegis of Private Telecommunications and Communications Senior Staff Association (PTECSSAN) have embarked on strike over sack, and poor working conditions among others.

Gbenga Adebayo, chairman, ALTON

This was as the union on Monday threatened to cripple telecommunications services nationwide.

Okonu Abdullahi, secretary-general, made this known in a statement on Monday while announcing the commencement of the strike.

Gbenga Adebayo, chairman, Association of Licensed Telecom Operators of Nigeria (ALTON), reacting to the development, said that the group is unknown to its members which include MTN, Globacom, Airtel, 9-mobile and other telcos in the country.

But Abdullahi, said that the action of his union “ has become inevitable because of the prevalent precarious working conditions our members are enduring in the sector, the refusal of the employers to recognise 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 noted that its members are over 800 working at various Nigeria telecoms company facilities, network centers and other critical telecommunications, including IHS and Huawei.

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 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.

However, Adebayo of ALTON, said that “This group is not known to us in ALTON, and the companies mentioned are not members of ALTON”,