From Isaac Anumihe, Abuja
AFTER three days of inactivity, business resumed yesterday at the Ministry of Finance, following a truce reached between the minister, Mrs. Kemi Adeosun, and the workers.
The minister had arrived the premises at 10 am to address the workers amid tight security, but the workers refused her entry insisting that she must talk to them from outside the gate.
After much persuasion, the minister was allowed in on the understanding that she should meet with them and tell them how she was going to liquidate the accumulated allowances.
The meeting was held in the auditorium of the ministry where Mrs Adeosun pleaded with them to give her one week to look into their demands with a view to meeting them.
This, to a large extent, pacified the angry workers and they agreed to suspend the protest.
But the Chairman, Joint Union Council of the Ministry of Finance, Mr. Ade Olaniyi, told Daily Sun that what triggered the strike was the way the minister responded to their demands.
“We invited her, wrote all our demands and attached them. We gave her a copy inviting her as a union. On March 16, we gave her another copy inviting her to have a townhall meeting with us so that she could explain better. On May 16, we gave her another one to enable us satisfy the labour law but she did not respond.
“When we got to her office, she was abusing us. Then the staff decided that she must come to address the issues. The most painful aspect of it is that she said she is not the minister of staff but the minister of Nigeria. That triggered the whole thing. We thank God that today, the whole issue and other demands were resolved amicably,” he said.
On the special overtime allowance, which the management said was not captured in the budget, Olaniyi said there was never a time the allowance, which the staff had enjoyed for 22 years, was captured in the budget, explaining that it was the extra money made from the target given to FIRS that wasgiven to the mother ministry.