Some workers with Access Bank Plc have protested against the alleged termination of their contracts and non-payment of their entitlements.
The workers, who protested at the bank’s head office in the Victoria Island area of Lagos State on Wednesday, carried placards depicting their agitations.
Some of the placards read, ‘Stop Access Bank brutality. More than 2,000 sacked’, ‘Access, pay us our entitlements’, ‘What does the future hold for support staff?’, ‘Stop enslaving Nigerians in their country’.
The workers accused the bank of terminating the contracts of over 2,000 workers without paying their entitlements.
Some of the workers, who spoke to PUNCH Metro, said trouble started on April 31, 2020, when the bank laid some staff off due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
It was gathered that the bank recalled the workers after the intervention of the Central Bank of Nigeria and the Federal Government.
Our correspondent was told that though the workers were recalled, they were asked to stay away from the office, as the bank continued to pay their salaries.
However, events took another turn on November 30, 2020, when some of them were served with letters terminating their appointments from their various outsourcing firms.
One of the protesters, Akintayo Akinyemi, who told our correspondent that the bank was in dialogue with the National Union of Banks Insurance and Financial Institution Employees, noted that the bank shifted the discussion till December 11 on purpose.
He said, “Now that they said they don’t want us anymore, we’re entitled to gratuities. If they are saying we should go, then they should pay our entitlements, and that’s what we’re fighting for.
“The bank already scheduled a meeting with our union for December 11. They shifted the meeting to that time because of what they planned to do.
“We want them to pay our entitlements; they should pay us off so that we can do something with our lives. I’m in my mid-thirties and I have been applying for jobs since then, but they have been turning me down because of my age. I cannot get a valid job anymore. I have put about 10 years into the system and I was laid off just like that.” (Punch)