The Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, has disclosed that frequent strikes by workers in the power sector has resulted in the loss of about N7.734 billion revenue between 2014 and 2016.
The minister stated this in Abuja yesterday while speaking at third triennial delegate conference of the Senior Staff Association of Electricity and Allied Companies (SSAEAC).
Calling on the sectors workers to begin to shed off their resistance to new private investors in the sector, he said that a survey of strikes in the electricity sector and its affiliations which he conducted has shown that between April 2014 and March 2016, strikes embarked upon by electricity workers union in the country had resulted to N7.734 billion revenue loss to the sector.
The minister averred that today government employees cling more to their unions than to government to the detriment of expected productivity. He decried workers’ continuous resistance of private investors’ plans to upgrade the country’s power sector, as well as government’s policy implementation in the sector.
“Can an employee who caused the employer such financial losses in all good conscience expect improved welfare packages or industrial peace? Or have the employees taken over from the employer?” Fashola asked.
He noted that the workers have in this regard failed to realise that the unions do not pay their wages but the government and that the task of making sure that electricity is produced and supplied to Nigerians was a collective responsibility that the workers, who in turn rely on the sector’s revenue share.
“Our jobs is to provide electricity and get paid for it, we have no other job. If electricity is not enough, it means that we haven’t provided it, you and me. If there is not enough electricity it is not the fault of the president but me and you who are employed to work in this sector,” Fashola told the workers.
Speaking further he said, “The finger pointing should stop. Our responsibility is to provide electricity, let us go back to work, we will solve the disputes one by one. It is improved productivity of electricity that yields the money that goes into your pockets, let us understand it, because you don’t get paid in advance but in arrears.
“Where a contract for service has been breached, is the remedy not to recourse, have we not evolved to a point where we now have an industrial court, and so if there are issues relating to conditions of service, why should we not adopt the option of process,” he added.
