The Maritime Workers Union of Nigeria has extended the seven days’ ultimatum issued to International Oil Companies (IOCs) over failure to obey of extant stevedoring regulations.
Addressing journalists on Thursday, the President General of the Union Comrade Adewale Adeyanju stated that following the plea from the Nigerian Port Authority (NPA) for a delayed action the union decided to extend the ultimatum to Friday 23rd of April 2021.
He said the union’s acceptance to further delay the strike action is to allow the management of NPA intervene and prevail on the IOCs to comply with the regulations, while stating that failure of which the union shall have no other option than to embark on a nationwide industrial action to press home its demand.
He said, “on IoCs, we issued out a notice to all the parties concerned, which include the NNPC and others along with NPA who happen to be the master of stevedores.
“The management of NPA invited us that we should have a chat with them. They appealed to us to step down our ultimatum that they also on their own will look into it to make sure that this matter is resolved.
“On that note, we have to comply with them because they are the master stevedores.
“If we should stop any operations at the port today, it is NPA that is going to affect more, because we are not going to issue any ultimatum to anybody on this issue again and the union is going to do what it knows how to do best.
“We have been on this issue for almost four years now and people will be calling us to step it down. We have got to a stage where we cannot listen to anyone on this issue anymore.
“Maybe the President of this country or the Minister of Transportation will call us when time comes. We are now trying to tell the whole world that the NPA has intervened and we listened to them as our stevedore and responsible organisation we know them for.
“The ultimatum is extended based on the agreement and the ways and manners NPA handled the issue, NPA also said they were not happy with the way IOCs are treating the matter.
“If they don’t have secrets in their terminals, why are they denying the appointed stevedores by NPA not to enter their terminals?” he asked.
On the ultimatum issued to APM Terminal, Adeyanju also stated that the ultimatum was suspended due to NPA’s intervention and other relevant stakeholders.
He said the union and the terminal already reached some agreements over the welfare of its members at the terminal.
“We have what we called communique to that effect. We have about 11 points agenda against the APMT over the welfare of our members.
The union is going to write APMT on proper review of CBA and what the workers are agitating for on the issue of anti-labour at APMT”, he said.
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