NCDC union poised to go on strike

By JULIA DAIA BORE
THE National Capital District Commission’s 400 union members are poised to take a possible strike action that could begin next Monday should their grievances before the Department of Personnel Management (DPM) and the Salaries and Conditions Monitoring Committee (SCMC) is not attended to.
Should the strike eventuate, it would affect vital services in the city such as general city cleaning and garbage collection among others.
It would also affect more than 250 contractors in Port Moresby as they could find themselves not attended to because there would be no personnel to attend to them.
President of the NCDC Workers Union Honk Kiap said members would meet to decide their final cause of action before Monday.
The Department of Labour and Industrial Relations stated, however, that without a secret ballot, the intended strike would be illegal.
Acting Industrial Registrar Sipelia Lemeki said a letter furnished by the union to his office only notified his office of the union’s intention to go on strike and the reasons why the union members were resorting to a strike action.
According to Mr Lemeki, the normal industrial process to follow was for the union to conduct a secret ballot to determine whether all its members were in favour of a strike or not.
Mr Lemeki told The National that he was also working around the clock to establish ways of “averting this situation”.
He is in the process of requesting for a meeting with either the DPM Secretary Margaret Elias or other officers with DPM and the SCMC to establish their reasons for the delays relating to these issues and to reach a compromise on how best to avert the pending crises.
Mr Lemeki said a strike was not the way to go and called on all parties to discuss the issue and reach an amicable solution.
The workers are awaiting a review and renewal of their salary fixation with new allowances and subsequent pay rises estimated to be between K2 million and K3 million to be back-dated to January this year.
Mr Kiap said that the salary review and renewal was expected to take effect last Dec 31, 2006.
In a letter to Ms Elias, Mr Kahe said: “It is evident with the way things are going and only one pay period remaining for the year 2007, we are now forming the opinion that the assurances from your Department are lies and deceptions at the expense of simple public servants like our members who look upon departments such as yours, to give meaning in what they do as civil servants day in day out.”
Mr Kiap said that the strike was the “last resort”.
He appealed to the SCMC to deal with the union’s salary issue to stop the strike.