The Maritime Workers Union of Nigeria (MWUN) has called on the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) to kick-start a fresh registration and documentation of all dockworkers operating across seaports in the country
The union also announced that it is ready to descend on some terminal operators who engage the services of unregistered dockworkers, thereby rubbing the union of its entitled jobs.
President General of MWUN, Comrade Adewale Adeyanju stated this yesterday while addressing some dockworkers at a Branch Working Committee meeting held in Kirikiri, Apapa Lagos.
He said the previous biometric card which was issued by the agency did not carry accurate information on the dockworkers. He charged NIMASA to put machinery in motion to make sure that all dockworkers all over Nigerian seaports are well registered and given biometric identity card.
According to him, the management of NIMASA had assured the union that the next round of identity cards would contain all the data of dockworkers and seafarers such as date of birth and other vital information.
He said, “they promised giving it to us but up till now we have not heard from them, we are appealing to them to expedite action on these issues"
"The stevedoring contractors have trained dockworkers to the present standard, but we want NIMASA who happens to be our regulatory agency, who supposed to midwife between the dockworkers and the terminal operators to come onboard and make sure that the biometric identity card that was issued to us about four years ago is long overdue and expired"
Comrade Adeyanju reiterated that some of the terminal operators were using the services of unregistered dockworkers to carry out the job of registered dockworkers.
To this he said "We are sending a warning to them, we would go round all the terminals for assessment, any terminal or jetty that we find not to be registered, the union would not hesitate to apply auction 'B' which is to alert the security agents"
The unionist assured that the era of thuggery is a thing of the past among Nigerian dockworkers, saying that the union now applies scientific approaches to issues.
While giving stewardship of his two years in office, Comrade Adeyanju said the union is now diversifying into owning business ventures. He said the union has also registered a 'Cooperative Society' in order to better the life of its members.
"The maritime workers union of today wants to diversify into business because since I came onboard as the PG, it is not the way it was before, our former PG used his personal money to send us abroad for training, but today we are running the union as purely union"
"Under two years we have registered a befitting company, we have diversified from being a trade union into a business orientated maritime workers. We have registered two companies, one is haulage and stevedoring, the other one is export business, all the certificates have been given to us"
"NUPENG, NURTW and other unions are into business, it is only our union that depends on check up dues"
"We would like you all to support this idea because we would be coming to terminal operators for jobs, we want to create employment for our members" he said
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