The staff of the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) has gone on strike to protests their working conditions and lack of welfare packages.
The NIMC office at Alausa on Thursday morning downed tools because of the recent increase in the er of visitors at the office which did not reflect in the welfare provided for them, Channels News reported.
They also alleged that there were no protective kits provided against COVID-19 during the exercise and many feared that they could get infected with the virus as they attend to a lot of people daily.
Last December, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) mandated that telecommunications subscribers linked their National Identification Number (NIN) to their SIM card numbers. The furtherance of this mandate has seen a surge of Nigerian citizens in the NIMC offices around the country who have come to register so they can get their NIN.
Although the initial due date for the linking exercise to end was December 30th, the NCC pushed back the date to January 19 for subscribers who already have their NIN and February 9 for those without.
In the NCC’s press release on 21 December, the commission claimed that the NIMC had ‘provided strategies to enable citizens to attend the registration in full compliance with COVID-19 protocols’ especially in the use of facemasks which remains mandatory and the maintenance of social distancing.
Witnesses, however, say that COVID protocols were far from observed at NIMC’s registration companies. A photo of the Alausa registration centre showed citizens cramped together as they stood to get registered.
Nigeria has also seen a surge in COVID-19 cases during the festive period and Osagie Ehanire, the health minister, has stated that the country was in the second phase of the virus. So far, 94,369 cases of the virus have been confirmed.
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