Air Transport Services Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (ATSSSAN) yesterday condemned the detention of its members by the Directorate of State Security (DSS) in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State, demanding their immediate release.
In a petition to the director-general of State Security Services (SSS) dated July 7, 2015, and signed by the general secretary of ATSSSAN, Captain Tarnongu, the union said, “It is our great expectation that you would deploy your good office to redress this wrong by ordering the immediate release of our members who are being conspiratorially detained by your officers in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State. May we remind you that under a democratic society, the rule of impunity is strongly frowned at.”
According to Tarnongu, crisis started when members of the ATSSSAN and National Union of Aviation Transport Employees (NUATE) at Akwa Ibom Airport Development Company (IADCL) embarked on strike to express their grievances to the management’s high handedness, mismanagement of the airport, unpaid wages and allowances and desperate transfer of 150 specially trained staffers to ministries and departments outside the airport.
ATSSSAN stated that the management of IADCL had been displaying unparalleled anti -union attitudes adding that Barrister Idara Etim, the resource administrator, in a memo directed that no worker should join any union as the state government had not approved any form of trade unionism.
while workers already in the union were given February 12 to renounce their membership or face disciplinary action.
The union noted that there was right to freedom of association, to join and belong to unions.
The union said the IADCL had planned to spend $34 million to train workers to replace those redeployed to ministries saying it was a grand scheme to corruptly mismanage the state tax payers’ money.
“To our chagrin however, security agencies were dragged in to a purely industrial relations matters that been mediated on by the Federal Ministry of Labour and Productivity yet the Management remained recalcitrant and refused to honour all hallowed agreements.
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