Strike: We can only take home N26,000 monthly, locomotive drivers lament

Locomotive drivers and workers of the Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC) have lamented that they can only take home N26,000 from the minimum wage salary received every month.

They stated this at Idu station, Abuja on Thursday during a protest organised to press demand improved salary packages.

Speaking to Nigerian Tribune during the protest, a driver who spoke to our reporter under the condition of anonymity said: “Dangote pays N300,000 to truck drivers, but here, NRC pays only N26,000 to locomotive drivers.

“NRC has beautiful modern infrastructure with zero welfare for workers,” he stated.

Other protesters at the Idu station carried placards that read “railway workers salary is the poorest under the ministry of transportation”, “we can’t work like slaves just to pay loans taken by the Federal government to build railway” among others.

Speaking to the President-General, Nigerian Union of Railway Workers (NURW), Innocent Ajiji said railway staff are the most poorly paid among all the parastatals in the Ministry of Transportation.

“It will interest you to know that our minimum wage is N30,000, so when you deduct contributory housing scheme, pension, union dues and tax, the salary drops down to N26,000.

“And that’s is the take-home of the railway workers, no allowance, nothing. That’s why we have decided to embark on this protest,” he stated.

Ajiji explained further that “it will interest you to know that our passengers that are riding on our train are insured, every good that we carry on our train is insured, but funnily enough, those operating the train are not insured.

“You could remember that four weeks back, there was a bomb blast on the train tracks if something had happened to those drivers, I am assuring you that the only thing that government would have paid them is expenses allowance which is less than N1 million, so we are demanding that our workers be insured so that if anything happens to them, the company will pay the next of kin a reasonable amount of money,” he said.

Ajiji stated that “we demanding that our standard of working condition should be reviewed,” adding that the review of railway workers welfare is supposed to be done every five years but was done last in 1978 and implemented in 1983.

Tribune Online reports that the warning strike is to last for three days, terminating on Saturday. The union said it will give the government some time to look into their demands.

YOU SHOULD NOT MISS THESE HEADLINES FROM NIGERIAN TRIBUNE

We Have Not Had Water Supply In Months ― Abeokuta Residents

In spite of the huge investment in the water sector by the government and international organisations, water scarcity has grown to become a perennial nightmare for residents of Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital. This report x-rays the lives and experiences of residents in getting clean, potable and affordable water amidst the surge of COVID-19 cases in the state.