Salary? ...N20 per hour
By Sun News
Saturday, June
4 , 2005
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•Solomon
with chopped fingers
•Photo:
Sun News Publishing |
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Faced with death, starvation wages and loss of limbs, it
is survival of the fittest for thousands of Nigerians trapped
in factories run by Asians. Under-cover Saturday Sun reporter,
EMMANUEL MAYAH, Posing as a casual worker in the last eight
or so weeks, variously picked up employment in three typical
Asian-run factories. He captures the struggles of poor Nigerians
caught in an inextricable web of toil, despair, intimidation
and slave labour all of which invoke the grim memories of
Nazi concentration camps.
The road to hell is hardly narrow. Like any of the over 600
factories owned by Asians in Nigeria, the wide gate leading
into Standard Industrial Development Company Limited (SIDCL)
Lagos speaks for itself. Yet this path is well-worn by the
feet of the over 400 Nigerian workers trapped in a dead-end
job, on a misery wage of N20 an hour, of which they must earn
every kobo in a gruelling 12-hour non-stop shift. That comes
to about N240 per day.
In this establishment, located at Ogba, where zinc, iron rods
and buckets are produced, not one Nigerian who passed through
its gate has come out the same. When a few fingers are not
chopped off by machines, then it is an entire limb, and when
human life is not lost, then it is human dignity.
Run by Chinese entrepreneurs, SIDCL is often counted as one
of those factories where Nigerians are caught in the inextricable
web of toil, despair, abuses and slave labour. And sometimes
death.
Exactly two years ago in June, 20-year-old Niyi Ojelabi fell
from a high roof to his death while toiling as a casual labourer
in the SIDCL premises. The victim reportedly fell from a height
of over 30 feet which one of the Chinese managers, Mr. Shoul,
had forced him to climb, to effect some repairs. The young
Nigerian’s complaints of dizziness and particularly
that he was not a carpenter were ignored by his Chinese boss
who it was said routinely saw nothing in putting his Nigerian
workers at risk, especially if it would help cut cost. Niyi’s
fellow labourers would later tell that the 7a.m – 7p.m
and 7p.m – 7am shift system was not even interrupted
as an ambulance rode in and took the remains of Ojelabi to
the mortuary of the General Hospital, Ikeja.
Driven by such cases of fatalities, loss of limbs and sundry
industrial accidents, rarely reported - on account of intimidation
and threats of sack, Saturday Sun, determined to capture the
sub-human bondage faced by Nigerians in the hands of their
Asian masters, went to work in some of the most dreaded factories
in Lagos. In an investigation spanning a little over eight
weeks, this reporter posing as a casual worker, penetrated
some of the labour camps run by Indians, Lebanese, Taiwanese,
Chinese and Malaysians.
Beginning from Kayeem Industries Ltd, a plastic manufacturing
company at Oshodi popularly known as Eskimo, Saturday Sun
was hired under the name Timothy Uwadiegwu, by a supervisor
called Tobi who must act with the consent of a surly Indian
manager. This factory could be accessed from Cappa Bus Stop
along the Old Agege Motor Road, but a quicker route for this
reporter was to navigate through the premises of Armed Forces
Resettlement Centre, Oshodi.
Located on a street called Blind Centre Street, Eskimo, despite
its beautiful looks from the outside, is a sight out of hell.
Job-seekers are welcomed by two towering almond trees in addition
to a swaying coconut tree, yet nothing demonstrated better
the worthlessness of the Nigerian workers than that names
of the new intakes as indeed the old ones were all recorded
in notebooks. But that was the least worry of the Nigerians
seeking their daily bread in this environment that had a shocking
appearance in the inside.
Eskimo, it was gathered, started out as Seydel Industries
Ltd, a chemical plant set up to produce dyes and sundry chemicals
for the textile sector. But with the closure of one textile
company after another, the company thought it wise to undergo
a mutation. Today they produce a wide range of plastic products,
however food coolers remain their mainstay.
Passing through the security gate, this reporter and about
16 other newly hired hands were herded into the factory building.
Substitute our everyday clothes with a prison uniform and
the picture of a death row would not be out of place. What
would pass as an orientation brief was given by a Nigerian
supervisor to the newcomers some of who were genuinely hoping
to find a future in this Asian establishment.
From three shifts to two shifts
The Asian structure is so fast-paced there are no rooms for
laziness, hence the supervisor wasted no breath on that. Until
a few years ago, Eskimo operated a three-shift marathon. In
the past, Nigerians who complained about the absence of break
were told that they were paid to work and not to rest. Today
however, things appear to be looking up. The workers on day
duty only are now entitled to a 30-minute break. In reality
the Nigerians are worse off. The break concession is hugely
to their detriment because the Indians have smartly collapsed
the afternoon shift and in its place introduced a compulsory
overtime. What this means is that instead of the old arrangement
of 6am – 2pm, 2pm – 9pm and 9pm – 6.am non-stop
shift, the Nigerians now work 8am – 8pm and 8pm –
8am two-shift system, with 30-minute break period. The catch
here is that the hours put in after the break from 3p.m are
considered overtime. What this further means is that during
this compulsory overtime, you are paid less wages per hour
than your normal wage during the morning period. The explanation
here is that for overtime, be it compulsory or voluntarily,
the worker is entitled to only his basic, not allowances like
transportation, feeding and housing.
Allowances and basic put together, this reporter was employed
on a salary of N1,800, to be paid every week subject to punctuality,
team work, surcharges for damages and indeed the whims of
the factory Manager, who has been known to order a slash of
two-days wages over minor offences as sleeping.
Inside the production hall, even a deaf mute would need nobody
to tell him that a tough business was going on. If he didn’t
hear the crankings of the not-so-modern machines, the frenzy
movement of the sweating and almost naked Nigerian workers
was an authentic image of purgatory.
Across the chains of machines that made up the production
line, they were essentially the injection machines, the moulds,
cooling tanks, colour trough, a chain block for lifting heavy
objects, air pipes, chillers and cutting machines.
Each of the machines was manned by an operator, supported
by two assistants. A simple description of the production
process is to say that raw rubber (latex) or imported polyethylene
are fed into the machines which turns it into molten state.
Colour is added and the mould shapes the plastic into cups,
plates, spoons, buckets or coolers as the case may be. The
mould is about the most essential component of the machines.
There are different shapes and sizes of moulds for the different
products. Depending on market demands, if plastic cups for
instance are to be produced, the right mould with the right
shape and size is selected and mounted on the machine with
the help of the chain block which itself works with a hook
and a system of pulleys. Once the colour of the plastic products
has been determined, the colour trough, which is removable
like the mould, is replaced with say green. Every product
made in that batch will have a green colour. Also there are
winding air pipes that supply cool air to the machines. These
are in addition to water pipes supplying cold water from chillers
mounted outside. The essence of all these is to cool and harden
the plastic products as they roll out of the machines.
For cups, bowls and the likes, the next stages are labelling
and shipment to the warehouse. It is a different ballgame
altogether for coolers. For coolers, the outer body and the
‘inner’ are produced separately using the same
process described above. They are then transferred to the
coupling section. Here two chemicals are mixed and poured
into the cooler. As a frothing reaction takes place the ‘inner’
is then introduced and both are held tightly together with
the help of a vice. At the end of the reaction, the chemicals
solidify to become foam which like an adhesive, not only holds
the outer and inner part of the cooler firmly together but
acts as an insulator, which neither gaining or losing heat
helps to preserve foods and drinks.
Getting down to the most dangerous work
Though this reporter had leaned heavily on his background
in electrical engineering to be deployed to this section,
what awaited him was a complete nightmare. Working at a frenetic
pace to correspond with the speed of fast-moving machines,
Saturday Sun was first saddled with the task of fishing out
defective products; those with imperfect shapes or similar
symptoms of production error. When such detected bad products
have made quite a heap at one corner, they are then expected
to be crushed, bagged and recycled, to be used as raw materials
in future productions.
Armed with cutlasses and mallets, this reporter and other
employees proceeded to cut and break the hard plastic materials
to pieces. The job appeared easy until the cutlasses started
bouncing off the hard plastics. This manual task is said to
have produced many accidents in the past with employees cutting
their arms or fingers. It is said there are machines that
could crush the waste plastics to pieces before they are ground
and recycled but the Asians won’t invest in expensive
machines, not after a number of employees have lost an eye
to pieces of flying plastics.
Because coolers, unlike buckets and bowls, are not easily
reduced to pieces with cutlasses, the Indians had installed
a machine, which was itself improvised. It was actually a
motor saw, the type used in timber mills to slice woods. The
noise is nerve-racking, but it is to this monster that this
reporter and his group must feed the bad coolers and must
watch carefully as it cuts the plastics into halves and the
halves further cut into quarters, etc. Even the supervisor
agreed that this was one of the most dangerous aspects of
the production.
According to the man who had worked in another plastic-producing
company called Sasoplast, a similar machine chopped off the
five fingers of an employee some years ago. He even joked
that all the Asias paid to the victim in 1999 was N2,500,
which translated to N500 per finger.
Some toilet
If that was the supervisor’s way of urging caution,
the information unsettled not a few new employees, so much
so that, caught between watching the monster machine and looking
out for the Asian Factory manager who could boot you out on
account of perceived sloppiness, this reporter in a moment
of indecision chose to hit the toilet. But what confronted
him was gut-wrenching. The toilets appeared like something
designed for refugees, but as this reporter later found out
to his utmost frustration, they were kept in that sorry state
to discourage truancy. Indeed the Indians had everything figured
out. No one goes in there and remained a minute longer than
necessary. In fact no one goes in there without a good reason
at all.
After ten days at Eskimo, Saturday Sun made a quiet exit from
the factory. By this time, four of the boys that started out
with this reporter had gone AWOL, unable to cope with the
hard labour. A curious feature of this Indian company is the
obvious preference to recruit very young workers; some as
young as 16 and 17 years. At least, one in every four workers
at Eskimo sustains injuries, especially at the crushing and
recycling section and also at the raw material section where
operators must use the hands to feed rubbers to ageing and
dangerous machines. The company has no clinic and if there
is a First-Aid box somewhere, this reporter never saw one.
From Eskimo to KRS Investment Ltd
If the value of a Nigerian worker at Eskimo is N1,800 a week,
his counterpart at KRS Investment Limited along Oworoshoki/Oshodi
Expressway is worth even smaller – N1,600 a week. But
he also has to work long hours, putting in 12 hours everyday,
from 6am – 6pm or from 6pm – 6am for night shift.
In this Asian company that produces Cascade table water and
a range of fruit juice like Ice Pomme, Ice Lemonande, Orange
and Cream Soda, this reporter put in seven days working in
this factory that showed an incredible obsession for cleanliness.
The task here entailed working long hours in constant standing-stooping
motion. Though this reporter’s duty was not about carrying
a cutlass anymore, the atmosphere was no less frenzy.
In a production hall crowded with about 200 workers, the stench
of body odour competed with the sweet smell of food sweeteners
as this reporter struggled to keep the pace, scooping bottled
beverages from a moving conveyor into cartons. This factory
boasts of a squeaky-clean laboratory where the formula or
concentrates for the different beverages are sorted out. There
are various kinds of machines, including the mixing machines,
the bottling machines, the corking machines and the labelling
machines. All these are linked together by a network of conveyors.
There are two operators to a machine and about 10 casual workers
attached to each machine to do sundry tasks.
This reporter was posted to the conveyor just after the labelling
machine. To work here, you need a good pair of eyes. The task
is to monitor the bottled drinks as they travel the conveyor
and very quickly spot and pick out those bottles not properly
corked or are half-filled or with poor labelling. Similar
tasks are also going on at the bottling sections where some
other workers, stationed like forest guards, inspect the plastic
bottles to ensure none is harbouring any debris.
On the days when Saturday Sun did not monitor the bottled
drinks on their journey, the other task was to grab the bottled
beverages, six at a time from the conveyor belt and stuff
them into cartons. The idea is to grab 12 bottles per minute
in a non-stop stooping-standing motion. As the cartons are
filled, someone next in the chain drags them away and supplies
empty ones. Yet some other workers grab the filled cartons,
seal them and stack them on a palette which is then rolled
off to the warehouse.
The division of labour is such that the production is broken
into nine stages, each manned by physically drained Nigerians,
driven to work like robots. To ensure this, the Indian factory
manager and supervisors are always on patrol, and when they
spot a weakness somewhere in the human chain, they begin to
bray: “Work! Work! Work!…” The spectacle
sometimes appears comical when some poor cleaners, employed
to ensure NAFDAC’s standard of hygiene in a food processing
environment, are seen dragging their mops and buckets in a
zigzag motion as they follow the feet of the screaming Indians
to wipe every trace of dirt left behind by their shoes on
the factory floor.
In this company, sandwiched between a textile factory and
a plastic manufacturing company, industrial accidents are
relatively low. However, incidents of dizziness and workers
collapsing from exhaustion are not strange. To forestall this
perhaps, the Indians have seen wisdom to construct a bathroom
fitted with four showers each for men and women. The dash
for the bathroom, especially during the short break allowed
by the Indians is mind-boggling. But it is only this period
that the Nigerians have the opportunity to urinate, rush their
food if there is any, go under the shower to regain strength
or simply go AWOL, never to return.
A staff canteen, at last
Since the workers at Eskimo cannot possibly eat plastic, their
counterparts at KRS appear a little better off. While Eskimo
has no canteen, KRS has one but the food is not subsidised.
On his first day at KRS, this reporter bought N60 food at
the canteen. When that didn’t seem to go anywhere, he
ordered another N40 food. Then thinking again that the task
ahead demanded more energy, he requested for N20 extra eba.
By this time, almost everyone in the canteen was starring.
Not to blow his cover, this reporter painfully decided to
be like the others, by making do with N40 food at work. Unlike
Eskimo where workers have no alternative ways to counter hunger,
KRS employees rely on what they produce, filling their stomachs
with bottled juice, but must do so while crouching behind
loaded pallettes.
No vacancy at Universal Steels
Though Saturday Sun was unable to find work at Universal Steels
despite three attempts, the reputation of this Chinese metal
scrap recycling plant preceded it. Except only for WAHUM,
not very far from it, no factory in Lagos has produced as
many amputees and deaths as Universal Steel. In this plant
located at Ogba, workers don’t go on break and enjoy
no protection against harmful chemical and unsafe machines.
There are no safety precautions whatsoever and accident is
the order of the day.
Condemned to a living hell are the workers in the welding
department who are subjected to intense heat from the fire
in the furnace. With temperature going over 300 degrees, workers
face naked fire that has dreadful side-effects, especially
damage to the eyes.
On the second day of trying to get work at Universal, a middle-aged
man whom this reporter had turned to for assistance tried
to discourage him with a snicker: “Na here you wan come?”
He would later disclose that aside the furnace there were
increasing cases of respiratory problems, arising from the
excess sulphur and nitrogen dioxide inherent in steel recycling.
It was further learnt that despite the fact that workers in
that section are gradually going blind on account of extensive
exposure to the furnace, the management have long spelt out
that treatment needing eye spectacles would not be the responsibility
of Universal Steels. Worse still, the life of a Nigerian is
worth N5,000; at least that is the amount specified in the
workers handbook to be given to cover burial expenses in the
event of the death of a worker in active service.
But when one Mr. Ekeh, popularly called Baba Ebere, died in
a explosion at Universal, his family did not get as much as
N500. According to his former colleague, the Nigerian who
worked as a welder was led to an untimely death when two Chinese
expatriates ordered him to plug a welding accessory to a particular
socket. Ekeh’s observations that the socket, reserved
for heavy-duty equipment was on high voltage, fell on deaf
ears as the impatient Chinese who did not understand much
of English barked at him to get on with the job. The resulting
explosion killed two Nigerians instantly and disfigured a
third. The Chinese who were badly harmed were flown abroad
for treatment while commensurate medical assistance were never
extended to the Nigerian victims.
Saturday Sun discovered that to ensure that their responsibilities
to their Nigerian workers do not go beyond wages and First
Aid, the Asians as a rule, sack all their Nigerian workers
every three months and ask them to re-apply. They are then
employed a second time only to be sacked again in another
three months time. For some workers, the circle has continued
like that for more than 10 years. That way, no worker is ever
ripe for gratuity or pension because he is always three-months
old in the company.
Because of this sinister regime and job insecurity, the Nigerians,
both old and young, are made to crawl and beg for work. Some
in a spate of three years have worked in fifteen different
factories. Every morning they troop out outside the gates
of Universal Steel, Eskimo, KRS, OK Foods, Deli Foods or Eureka
Metals Limited. And afraid to go home on the days the Asians
refuse to hire anybody, the Nigerians mill around, eating
groundnut and bemoaning a wasted generation.
Eureka!! But he lost his manhood
Lurking in their midst outside Eureka Metals Ltd at Ikeja,
one of them told the agonising story of an employee who lost
his male organ to a machine at WAHUM, a household and utensils
manufacturing concern, owned by Taiwanese. The company, located
along Adeniyi Jones Avenue in Ikeja was said to have a notoriety
that paralled WAHUM. The former employee said that in the
last five years, no less than 130 Nigerians have lost one
part of their body or another.
One of them was Friday Emuta. A slippery floor was all it
took to change his life irrevocably. One afternoon, while
working in the factory, he slipped and fell, smashing his
penis and testicles against the sharp spindle of a machine.
He was bleeding profusely and rushed to the Lagos University
Teaching Hospital (LUTH) where he spent one year and had three
operations. At the end, he lost the battle to save his manhood
and ended up without prospect of a wife.
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