Data and call services may face disruption from today, Wednesday, June 16, 2021 as the Private Telecommunications and Communications Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PTECSSAN) commences strike.
The Union, which protects the rights of telecom workers in Nigeria, had earlier announced its plans on Monday, June 14, 2021, stating that it plans to embark on a three-day strike.
As the industrial action plans to start today, users are notified that they may be unable to conveniently use data and call services during the three days as the strike is likely to disrupt these services.
The reason for the industrial action, according to The Punch’s report, is for PTECSSAN to express its concerns against what the General Secretary, Okonu Abdullahi, calls “arbitrary sackings and casualisations”.
According to Victoria Fakiya at Techpoint Africa, “Abdullahi said that workers are usually outsourced, which has caused a significant problem in the industry. And since it’s a continual problem, workers are always shortchanged.”
PTECSSAN has made demands in the past while threatening to go on strike regarding this problem. Last year August, the Union threatened to go on a two-week warning strike over workers-salaries, employee relations practices, exit packages for long-term staff, and alleged abuse of expatriate quota, among others. In March 2021, it planned to embark on an industrial strike against Huawei Technologies Nigeria Limited, a telecom equipment company. They kept denying workers the right to speak one voice.
The strike action reportedly commencing today is against the precarious working conditions in the telecom sector like ignoring occupational health and safety, lack of hazard allowance and poor remuneration, and the abuse of national laws and institutions by employers.
There’s no doubt that the strike will cause disruptions to data and call services which in turn affect the Nigerian economy. To confirm this, on Tuesday, June 15, 2021, MTN Nigeria reported that its service in Nigeria might be disrupted due to the current insecurity in the country.
In its message to customers seen by Reuters, the company said “Sadly, we must inform you that with the rising insecurity in different parts of Nigeria, service delivery to your organisation may be impacted in the coming days. This means that in some cases, our technical support team may not be able to get to your site and achieve optimum turnaround time in fault management as quickly as possible.”
Techpoint Africa has reached out to MTN and Airtel who are yet to respond to the ongoing crisis. The reporter is also not certain that the Minister Dr Isa Pantami will intervene this time. There’s also no news whether or not the industrial strike action will aid the association’s demands.
