Judiciary workers threaten strike over poor working conditions

Crisis looming at the federal judicial workers over poor working conditions and have issued a warning strike to the federal government.

The worst hit is workers at the National Industrial Court of Nigeria (NICN) who are lamenting poor working conditions and the non-implementation of several welfare packages for them.

Two letters sighted in Benin City on Thursday addressed to the Chief Registrar Federal High Court Abuja and members of the Judiciary Staff Union of Nigeria (JUSUN) at the Customary Court of Appeal said the workers were yet to receive 25 and 35 per cent salary increase and N35,000 wage award and would soon embark on industrial action.

At the NICN court in Benin City, the situation is more pathetic as beyond the above, NICN workers have not also received the N70,000 minimum wage.

One of the workers told Vanguard on condition of anonymity that “Last Christmas, many of us got peanuts as Christmas bones, the salary is very poor, the minimum wage has not been implemented to workers of the NICN, the 35,000 wag award by the federal government, till date, we are yet to receive, and nobody is talking about arrears, other organisations under the same federal government have January to July but nobody is talking about ours in the NICN

“Yet the economic situation is high but our management is not doing anything to assuage the sufferings of the workers, I learnt some of our colleagues in the Federal High Court are also going through the same but the little difference is that those other ones go for training regularly but that is not the same for us in the NICN, we recently went for promotion examination, till now, our DTA has not been paid and nobody is talking about it. We are members of JUSUN but the union seems not to be active at the federal level so our cases are unattended to, they are only active in the states but the leaders at the national level are not living up to expectations, they only collect our dues.”