Staff of Kwara State-owned media houses have vowed to commence a two-day warning strike action between Tuesday and Wednesday of this week following the failure of the state government to treat them and cultural workers as essential workers in the state employment.
The impending industrial action of the aggrieved media workers was also predicated on the inability of the state government to accede to their demands for the implementation of 100 percent essential allowance for them.
Those affected include staff of Kwara State Printing and Publishing Corporation (The Herald Newspapers), Kwara State Broadcasting Corporation (Radio Kwara), Kwara State Television Authority (Kwara TV) and Kwara State Arts and Culture.
This was contained in the joint warning strike notice issued in Ilorin and signed by the Chairman, National Union of Paper Products, Printing and Publishing Workers (NUPPPROW) of The Herald Newspapers, Ahmed Abiodun Abdulrazaq; the Chairman, Radio Kwara Chapel of Radio, Television and Theatre Arts Workers Union (RATTAWU), his Kwara TV counterpart; and Chairmen, Herald, Radio Kwara and Kwara TV Chapels of Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), Jimoh Bashir, Abdulhamid Alaye and Jimoh Gobir Sulyman respectively.
In the notice, the unions called for an immediate revision of the weigh-in allowance to be at per with minimum wage of ₦30,000 and a 27 percent increment based on grade level, which has not been implemented.
Among issues precipitating industrial action in the state-owned media outfits are non-implementation of the 2021 and 2022 promotion exercises, inability to overhaul equipment and facilities in the media houses in spite of repeated appeal, annual increment anomalies and stagnation in career progression, which has unjustly restricted workers in Radio Kwara and Kwara TV to Level 16 Cadre as the peak of their career in the civil service.
The aggrieved media workers are also protesting the imposition of junior officers as Corporation Secretaries and Controllers of Finance and Supply (CFAs) on the state-owned media houses, who are often deployed from the office of the state Head of Service and Ministry of Finance respectively without taking cognizance of the global best practices.
The NUPPPROW, RATTAWU and NUJ said the decision to embark on the warning strike was consequent upon a period of extensive dialogue and negotiations, which has not yielded tangible outcomes.
The unions expressed disappointment in the lack of concrete actions from the government, thus heightening the resolution to proceed on the industrial action.