By Tajudeen Adebanjo
The National Association of Scrap and Waste Dealers Employers of Nigeria (NASWDEN) has begun a three-day nationwide warning strike over what it called “sabotage” by foreign-owned companies.
NASWDEN supplies the companies vehicle parts, aluminum, nail, iron, gearbox, engine, among others.
The companies recycle waste products to produce rod, burglary, spoon, plastic, among others.
They accused the firms of economic sabotage.
Addressing a news conference at Ojota, Lagos, the union President, Alhaji Lukman Onifade, said that the companies were in the habit of arbitrary reduction of the agreed price for the scrap and waste sold to them.
According to him, the action has made many of their members to be indebted.
“There are three chains in this business – the pickers, buyers and suppliers. We, as the suppliers, buy the scrap and waste goods from the buyers based on the price we agree with the companies we supply to. On getting to the companies we are supplying, they would have held meetings among themselves on the reduction of the amount agreed. Eventually, we have to sell at a loss.
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“I saw an old man sitting down at a factory last week, crying, because he has lost N450,000. How many times will it take this man to realise N450,000? So we don’t need to die in silence again. This is why we are crying out to the Federal Government to save us from these foreign investors,” he said.
A member of the union Board of Trustees, Alhaji Ibrahim Soja, said NASWDEN will go on a long strike after the three-day warning strike if the companies do not reverse their action.
“No one in this country will supply any steel to the companies. They cannot continue short-changing us and turning us to debtors. Many of us took loans from banks to invest in this business. How do we repay the loans with the way the companies are sabotaging our efforts?” he said.
The union’s women leader, Alhaja Taibat Alaka, decried the treatment they received from the companies.
She said: “We are not being treated fairly. This is a very big problem. We want these people to negotiate with us if they want to reduce the price. Let them give us three months’ notification before tampering with the agreed price.”
Lagos State Chairman of the union Comrade Friday Oku described steel business as the largest after oil business in the country.
He said more than 51 million Nigerians are into the business.
“The business is worth over N1 trillion. This is why we want the government to help us curtail the excesses of these foreigners. We are contributing to the economy of this country. We also engage in poverty reduction. The government should help us. The company didn’t give us money, we went to the bank to borrow this money and we lost this money in this kind of unfair dealings,” Oku said.
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