The employees of New Nigerian Newspapers expressed their regret on Thursday over the over 100-month delay in paying their salary arrears and other benefits.
They claim that more than 103 employees have passed away while waiting for their benefits.
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They claimed that several workers had passed away from illness, and their kids were unable to go to school.
On behalf of hundreds of workers, Comrades Friday Idoko, Funmi Aderinto, Usman Nasidi, and Emmanuel Bello, Chairmen and Secretaries of the in-house unions, issued a press release in which they pleaded with Simon Lalong, Chairman of the Northern Governors’ Forum, to pay the company’s employees their accrued salaries and other benefits.
The statement also bemoaned the slow progress of the process started in 2017 to sell company assets in order to pay off employee salary and benefit arrears.
The statement stated that “many workers have died, others are seriously ill, along with hunger and starvation at this difficult time,” and questioned why some companies’ assets had been sold but no action had been taken to pay workers’ entitlements.
They pleaded with Lalong to act quickly and order the fund’s distribution to the company’s employees in order to ease their plight.
The National Union of Printing, Publishing and Paper Products Union Workers (NUPPPROW) and the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) members who make up the Joint Union, according to a statement, “expresses worries over workers’ plight due to non-payment of salaries for many years, resulting in depression and deaths of over 103 staff waiting for their entitlements.”
