Editorial
Barely three weeks after the police in Kano State rescued some 100 workers forced to work in a rice factory during the coronavirus lockdown, Nigeria is apparently not done with cases of forced labour occasioned by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, unlike Kano where the police came to the rescue of the workers, this time, it was some 200 women said to be wives of the workers at the nation’s foremost electricity plant – Egbin Power Plant, storming the plant to demand that their husbands be allowed to reunite with their families. The women claimed that their husbands have not been allowed to return home since March 27 when the Federal Government locked down Lagos and Ogun states as well as the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, over the COVID-19 pandemic, hence their exposure to all manner of privations.
The company, on its part, denies that its employees have been compelled to remain within the premises as a result of the pandemic. It claims to “have a globally acclaimed procedure that requires a period of quarantine for people that have left the plant to ensure the safety of all employees and their families”.
While such denials would ordinarily be expected, it would seem far-fetched to suggest that the women either acted in a vacuum or were sponsored by anyone, particularly as the National Union of Electricity Employees, NUEE, had much earlier, in a letter dated May 28 drawn the attention of the company’s management to the same issues raised by the protesting women, especially the brazen disregard to the rights and the welfare of the workers by the company.
Ironically, the same letter which referenced the denial of access by staff to family members and loved ones also noted that the station’s contractors from several parts of the country were actually allowed access to and from the station on daily basis.
Denial or not, the management of the plant certainly has a lot to answer for. Surely, the women and the union cannot be all wrong and the management of Egbin Power Plant, right. The relevant department(s) in the Ministry of Labour and Employment should be interested in assisting Nigerians to find out the truth, given their implications on our labour laws and relevant global conventions on the environment of work. The idea that the management of Egbin Power Plant can – simply because theirs is an essential service – compel the staff to work in the circumstances described by the women and the labour union is as offensive as it is inexplicable. Not even the exigencies forced by the ravaging COVID-19 pandemic makes it any tolerable. The least that the management could have done in the circumstance was to work out a programme of work that balances the rights, safety and the humanity of the workers with the need to keep operations running smoothly.
In any case, if the Implementation Guidance for Lockdown Policy rolled out by the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19 in March, particularly the aspect touching the movement of essential services workers is any guide, limited transport services are allowed for the movement of workers and those services and goods categorised as essential. The only caveat is that the services must have social distancing and hygiene measures embedded. If we understood those guidelines as designed to minimise the risk of the spread of the virus, what the management of the firm ought to have done was fill whatever perceived gaps in the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) protocols with its own, making adequate, all-round provision for those personnel to guarantee their safety as indeed those of their loved ones, and, educating them on what needs to be done at this difficult time. These are what one would expect of a good corporate citizen as against needlessly locking the workers up.
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