Activities at the nation’s seaports were grounded between 6am to 12pm on Tuesday as maritime workers under the aegis of the Maritime Workers Union of Nigeria (MWUN), began a warning strike over contentious amendment of the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) Act.
On the sideline of the protest, the National President of the MWUN, Adewale Adeyanju, told newsmen that the strike was a warning strike aimed at stopping further amendment of the NPA Act.
The action was total and affected all the ports in the country.
According to Adeyanju, “Today, our members nationwide, from Rivers ports to Calabar ports down to Onne, Lagos and Tin-Can ports, trooped out to protest amendment of the NPA Act by some perceived vested interest under the guise of the Ports and Harbours Bill.
“We practically grounded ports activities from 6 p.m. today and just called off the strike by noon because the protest is a warning strike. If they don’t stop the policy of throwing workers out of their jobs under the guise of amending the NPA Act, what will follow next will be worse than what happened today.”
Adeyanju noted that if the Bill was passed into law it would lead to massive job loss to members of the union as item 6 of the second schedule of the Bill states that not all the staff of the NPA would be absolved into the Harbour authority.
