MWUN against APM Terminals outsourcing internal security to foreign coy
The Maritime Workers Union of Nigeria (MWUN) has warned that it would not accept an alleged outsourcing of internal security functions at the APM Terminals Apapa to foreigners, against the interest of the Nigerian workers.
President of the Union, Comrade Adewale Adeyanju, in a statement on Sunday, called for the immediate reversal of the decision by the Terminal, to avoid crisis situation, as members of the Union had become agitated over the matter.
He said that security functions in the nation’s maritime industry must have input of Nigerians, since the industry serves as gateway for bringing in most essential and sensitive materials.
Adeyanju said that, “It has been correctly said that the maritime sector is the gateway to the Nigeria economy and through this means it caters to an appreciable percentage of export and import of materials, products, foods, medicals, pharmaceuticals, constructions materials etc.
“It is therefore in our Nation’s economic interest that stability in this sector be maintained at all times and at all levels. Security is also very paramount in this trying period of seeming growing incidences of breaches in security all over our nation, so, any act capable of further contributing to its breakdown should be met with serious attention.
“In order therefore to forestall a further breach of security situation in our ports we – MARITIME WORKERS UNION OF NIGERIA wish to bring to the attention of the general public the teething activities which aims to undermine the security of our nation’s maritime security and by this our nation’s.
“This is why we have deemed it necessary to inform our public of the activity of Messrs. APM Terminals, Nigeria, whom we are reliably informed have through a memo to our members, ceded and outsourced the security functions of the organization to an external – South African, security service provider – Messrs G4S and security management by CRS, effective Thursday March 18th, 2021, without recourse to the Union and consideration to our members and the nation’s security.”
“We are more alarmed because what that means is that the security functions of APM Terminals, which one of the biggest receiver of containerized cargo in our nation’s seaport, has been outsourced to foreign nationals without input from local and internal security systems, thus opening our ports to all sorts of inflow of dangerous cargo which are not recorded.”
Adeyanju expressed concern that the AMP Terminals had also almost concluded arrangement to do away with Nigerians in other departments and replace them with foreigners, thereby depriving thousands of Nigerian workers of a means of livelihood.
He said that the terminal’s decision was anti-labour as the Union did not hold any discussions with it or reached any agreement in that regard with it.
“This is in clear negation of the federal government’s goal to create employment. We wish to inform the general public that APM Terminals is in this action unilateral and in clear violation of clause 3 of an existing Agreement reached between the Union and their management which states that “In the event of a further need for outsourcing in the operations, the MWUN and management of APMT will discuss and reach an agreement.”
