Industrial Court commences hearing in workers’ suit against BPE, PHCN

National Industrial Court sitting in Ibadan on Wednesday commenced hearing in a suit filed by 384 former casual workers of the defunct Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) and the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE).
The casual workers had sued PHCN and BPE over non-payment of their salaries and entitlements.
The counsel to the claimants, Mr Ahmed Tarfa, told the court that he would call five witnesses to testify in the matter. Tarfa called one Rasheed Oshodi as his first witness to tender some documents to the court. The testimony of the witness was, however, stalled mid-way when Justice Firstina Kola-Olalere said she would not accept the documents because they were not properly arranged for easy identification.
Kola-Olalere said that the documents were huge in number base and had to be arranged starting with the name of the first claimant to the last. She ordered the claimant’s counsel to make necessary correction before the next hearing date and adjourned the case till Nov. 9 for continuation of hearing. Earlier, the court had granted a motion by the counsel to BPE, Mr Ogala Osoka, to regularise his statement of defence and other processes.
The counsel to PHCN was, however, not in court.
It would be recalled that Tarfa had earlier told the court that his clients were employed as contract, casual staff and corporate guards by PHCN prior to its privatisation.
He said that they had complied with the BPE’s directive to regularise and re-designate from casual or contract to permanent staff status by Dec. 31, 2009. Tarfa said that the claimants were entitled to the payment of their salaries, severance packages, gratuities, pension and other entitlements as regularised staff of PHCN. The counsel urged the court to direct the defendants to pay the claimants all their salaries, severance packages, gratuities, pension and other entitlements due to other employees.