State-owned media workers begin strike in Kwara Tuesday

Workers of Kwara State-owned media have vowed to commence a two-day warning strike on Tuesday and Wednesday this week following the failure of the state government to treat them and cultural workers as essential staff.

The impending industrial action of the aggrieved workers is also predicated on the inability of the state government to accede to their demands for the implementation of 100 per cent essential allowances 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 a joint notice issued in Ilorin, the state capital, and signed by the chairman of the National Union of Paper Products, Printing, and Publishing Workers (NUPPPROW) of The Herald newspapers, Ahmed Abiodun Abdulrazaq; chairman of the Radio Kwara Chapel of Radio, Television, and Theatre Arts Workers Union (RATTAWU); and his Kwara TV counterpart.

Others who signed the notice include the chairmen of the Herald, Radio Kwara and Kwara TV chapels of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), respectively, Jimoh Bashir, Abdulhamid Alaye, and Jimoh Gobir Sulyman.

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The unions called for an immediate revision of the weigh-in allowance to be at par with the minimum wage of N30,000 and a 27 per cent increment based on grade level, which has not been implemented.

Other contending issues are non-implementation of the 2021 and 2022 promotion exercises, inability to overhaul equipment and facilities in the media houses despite repeated appeals, 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 at the state-owned media houses, who are often deployed from the Office of the Kwara State Head of Service and Ministry of Finance, respectively, without taking cognisance of global best practices.

NUPPPROW, RATTAWU, and NUJ said the decision to embark on the warning strike was contingent upon a period of extensive dialogue and negotiations, which has not yielded tangible outcomes.