Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) workers under the aegis of Maritime Workers Union of Nigeria (MWUN) have raised an alarm that the control towers elevators at the Tin Can Island offices and the Warrior Port offices are no longer working.
President of the NPA branch of MWU; Comrade Ifeayin Mazeli stated this in a chat with newsmen in Lagos.
Mazeli lamented that the workers at both ports are being forced to climb stairs before assessing the control and signal towers at both ports.
Mazeli also appealed to management of NPA to engage more junior cadre staff in the next phase of its employment.
Recall that the President of NPA Senior Staff Association in an interview with Shipping Position Daily recently expressed same fears about succession in the NPA, saying that the recent recruitment did not address the dearth of Junior Workers in the agency.
Mazeli also noted that despite the recent recruitment carried out at the NPA, the lower cadre officers are less in numbers when compared with the senior staff currently engaged by management.
The unionist maintained that the operational activities of the agency depend squarely on the junior workers.
According to Mazeli, the issue of the broken down elevators formed an integral part of the communique issued at the end of the Branch Executive Committee meeting of the union held in Port Harcourt, recently.
He said: “We talked about the signal tower, the control tower, we talked about the lifts all over the federation. Exercise is good but not when you are forced to do exercise. “
“If you want to do exercise, then it must be at your leisure, but not when you are mandated to take the step because the lifts are not working.
“They have carried out repairs on the lifts at the headquarters but we are looking at the areas like Warri and Tin Can Island Port where you have to go to control tower and you climb over how many steps.
“Those are some of the areas we are looking at because when you talk about workers’ welfare, it is not just the financial aspect of it but the safety of the environment.
“We are begging the management to look into those areas because the height is something else.
The branch President further appealed to the management to fix the lifts in all its facilities across the nation to avoid giving its members unnecessary stress in the line of duty.
The union boss said it was particular about the control towers at Tin Can Island Port Lagos and the Warri office of the agency.
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