Following alleged diversion of check-up dues of Senior Staff Association of Electricity and Allied Companies, SSEAC, by the Managing Director, Mr. Usman Gur Mohammed, among other allegations, Lagos State chapter of the Trade Union Congress (TUC) on Monday stormed the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) in Lagos in protest.
The union also accused Mohammed of mismanagement of funds, adding that he threatened to sack some of the workers.
Addressing newsmen, the Assistant Secretary of the TUC, Comrade Kazeem Labaika said there was the need for President Muhammadu Buhari to call the TCN Director to order, and threatened to shutdown the nation’s power system if nothing was done on the matter.
It would be recalled that President Buhari approved the appointment of Mr. Usman Gur Mohammed as the substantive Managing Director of the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN) a year ago.
According to TUC, the TCN Managing Director had been diverting SSEAC’s check-up dues to his cronies before ignorantly writing to confirm it. The union alleged further that part of the TCN MD’s strategy was bribery with money, postings, gifts, foreign trainings and promotions of staff.
“He is also using his cronies to hold on to the implementation of salary increase as started by the last administration, while wasting resources to maintain the same compromised staff.
“‘He has also concluded plans to transfer staff medical care to inefficient NHIS where he has interest and where they treat only malaria?
“Meanwhile, he is allowing staff to die waiting for approval of foreign medical trips while granting same for flimsy cases even with forged medical reports,” TUC added.
TUC auditor, Comrade Awin Blessing said that since the appointment of the MD, he had cleared over 700 40-feet containers of equipment from seaports without record of receipts in TCN stores, adding that “We await long drawn nationwide action to save TCN and power sector as we have given statutory notices to government agencies for his violation of negotiated conditions of service, impunity and destruction of the unions”.
