Railway Union Makes Case For New Employment

As efforts to rehabilitate the Eastern District of the Nigeria Railway Corporation (NRC) are in progress, the National Union of Railway Workers (NUR) has appealed to the management to ensure that enhanced salary package for its workers is approved without delay.
This was contained in a statement signed by the District Chairman of NUR, Comrade Innocent Orji Kalu, and the Acting Secretary, Comrade Pius Uchendu Oruh and presented during a visit of the Chairman, Board of the NRC, Alhaji Bamanga Tukur to the District recently.
The statement also called for immediate employment of more railway workers as most are at the verge of retirement and if no replacements or new workers are employed, there would be loss of knowledge transfer to the new intakes, which they said might result to a total system collapse as experience on the rail job is not taught in the university but acquired on the job.
It also claimed that annual budgetary allocations for staff training and re-training have not been fully utilised as workers who benefitted from the exercise in the past four years were not paid allowances due them.
The union further alleged that deductions being made from individual staff salaries do not reflect in their Retirement Savings Accounts (RSA) with PENCOM and it is affecting retirees’ take-home package at the end of their services, as well as appealed for upgrading of the clinic and other facilities at the Port Harcourt terminal.
“It is quite disheartening to note that Railway workers at Port Harcourt do not enjoy the benefits of National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), the statement said, and appealed to the authorities to ensure that every railway staff benefits from the monetisation policy as it would be in line with the Federal Government transformation agenda in repositioning the railway system in Nigeria.
“The union has just discovered plans by the management to engage few hands in Eastern District in the name of critical needs. Let our teeming unemployed youths be engaged in the services of this corporation to drive home the transformation agenda of President Jonathan’s administration in job and wealth creation”, it posited.

Collins Barasimeye