@all,

Airtel workers in Abuja down tools
By Ngozi Sams and Taiye Agbaje
June 9, 2011 11:31PM
print email


Members of staff of Airtel, one of Nigeria’s big telecommunications operators, yesterday refused to work alleging that their welfare was not adequately attended to by the company.

The staff members, numbering about 100, have vowed not to return to work unless the May salary owed them by the organisation was paid.

On Thursday morning, the aggrieved workers locked the entrance gate of the Abuja branch office demanding, among other things, the restoration of their National Health Insurance Scheme; downward review of working hours; review of the status of pregnant women and unfavourable annual leave policy.

The workers, who conducted their protest in an orderly manner, were closely monitored but uninterrupted by armed police personnel.

The protesters, made up mostly of customer care service staff, complained that they were being subjected to all manners of inhuman treatment by the company.

“First of all, when Zain transformed to Airtel, there was no formal correspondence to the staff that we are now staff of Airtel,” one of the staff who would not like to be named said. “The current identity cards we are using attest to that. Apart from that, we are all on contract. We are working for an outsourced company, but we never had issues of this nature until the coming of Airtel.

“At entry point, we were never given enough time to scrutinise our contract papers; we were hurried into signing it. The main contention for today’s protest is the manner we were being paid since the coming of Airtel. It was just yesterday that some of us started receiving bank alert for our May salary, and from the usual N74,000, what they are being paid is between N15000 and N45,000. There was no explanation from the management for this development.” One of the workers, also called on government to look into the issue of contract staff and casualisation of workers in Nigeria, which he said foreign companies take advantage of the situation to exploit Nigerian workers. “Even some big men in Nigeria take delight in this to exploit the youth in the country. They don’t want transformation in Nigeria and that is why I am calling on President Jonathan to intervene on the matter,” he said.

Another staff also said they have been working longer hours, while their free days were reduced from four to two.

“Another problem is that our health insurance scheme was stopped, while deductions were still being made without remittance to appropriate authorities. Pregnant women are also not allowed to work here because the management just sacked all of them one day without any explanation and this was not stated in the contract papers. We are also expected to collect no allowance for going on annual leave. I have never seen this kind of inhuman treatment before,” he said.

However after about four hours of discussion between the management of the Abuja office and about 10 representatives of the workers, Sunday Al-Hassan, President of the National Union of Postal and Telecommunication Employees (NUPTE) addressed the restless workers on the outcome of the meeting.

Not our staff

He said the management had agreed to pay the May and June salary, but the workers objected to this.

The management of Airtel however said the protesters are not their staffers and that it was a dispute between a service provider and its employees.

Rajan Swaroop, chief executive officer of Airtel, yesterday acknowledged that “ June 9, 2011, employees at the Call Centre in Asokoro, Abuja, run by one of our service providers, Spanco Nigeria Limited protested a dispute between them and their employer.” He said Spanco Nigeria Limited has been providing Call Centre Services to Airtel customers in Nigeria.

“The Management of Airtel wishes to assure Nigerians that today’s incident would not affect the integrity of the network or the quality of service delivery to customers in Abuja area. While respecting the contractual relationship between Spanco and its employees, Airtel has stepped in to ensure speedy resolution of the crisis in recognition of international best labour practices and the interest of our customers.”

What do you expect from Indians ? That name "Indian" should send shivers down any employees spine. By the time they're finished all employees will be riding bicycles for 50kms to work every day.

Such maltreatment will continue to be experienced until we develop a system that gives the Nigerian the priority in all dealings with foreigners.

edoyad:

What do you expect from Indians ? That name "Indian" should send shivers down any employees spine. By the time they're finished all employees will be riding bicycles for 50kms to work every day.

What has indians got to do with it? This same scenario is being played out in all foreign owned companies, where nigerians are paid peanuts compared to their citizens brought in under expatriate quota.

Indians own business in UK and other countries, they can't dare to treat the host nation citizens like slaves.

what do they expect when the federal government themselves indulge in such practice as casual staff (phcn)

I BLAME OUR immigration officials for granting those boys work permit to come and work in Nigeria as HR manager and so on. In india they pay call agents upto $1000 per month while the $500 they pay Nigerians is too much. Our government is the majoy problem.