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A month after the
screening exercise to verify the exact number of NITEL workers has been
concluded, no salary has been paid to the workers, they said on Monday.

Some of the NITEL
workers, who spoke in Lagos, said they were made to think that the
screening exercise was carried out by the federal government to help
ease the payment of their 27 months’ salary arrears. A NITEL worker,
who spoke under anonymity said, “We had thought that by now we would
have received some payment of our salaries but right now nothing has
happened. This is so unfair and the worse human treatment to keep
people for over two years and don’t pay them. I have said this before;
the federal government should let us go than keeping us here to
suffer.” The worker added that the only service on NITEL that is
functioning is the South Atlantic (SAT-3) which the government still
gain some certain revenue from.

In his reaction,
Sule Shehu, NITEL spokesperson said, “Nothing has come out from that
exercise; we only carried out the screening exercise to ascertain our
strength and weaknesses. Nothing has been done about the workers up
till now, no salaries have been paid and no news about when government
would pay the workers or not.” “I know that when the NITEL management
was carrying out the screening exercise, a committee from the federal
government was carrying out its own assignment and they were also
looking at the labour restructuring, preparing ground to pay workers
salary and lay off some workers that I know,” added, Mr. Shehu.

Absenteeism at the workplace

Since last year,
only few workers resume for work in NITEL offices across the country as
the staff regularly complain over unpaid salary arrears. Consequently
NITEL management has turned a blind eye to the development as they
understand the difficult situation the workers experience.

“To be honest not
all of us are coming to work, it’s only some workers that are able to
and we don’t frown at those who don’t come to work,” said Mr Shehu.
“But, if there is any emergency and one of the workers needed is not
around we usually send a token to the workers to come and do their
assignment. We can’t be too hard on workers that don’t come to work
because they have not been paid for over 24 months. Right now, there
are very few workers around and we stay till about 4.00pm to 5.00pm
before closing for the day and this is the same situation in all NITEL
offices around the country.”

In December 2009 the federal government had promised to pay off five
months arrears before the end of January 2010. A total sum of N3
billion was taken from NITEL staff pension fund by Olusola Adekanola
& Co, the liquidator of NITEL which was used to pay their salaries
for one month as opposed to five months that was planned for. Some
workers were paid one month salary in December, while junior staff was
paid two months’ salary. The payment process failed as the liquidator
decided in February 2010 to stop all payment because of alleged
harassment by some NITEL workers.