CSO Frowns As Chinese Firm Allegedly Neglect Staff Involved In Kogi Auto Crash.
The PAN African Youth Development Network has alleged that the BN Ceramic Company has neglected workers involved in an auto crash which claimed the lives of seven staff of the firm , Ajaokuta, Kogi State while many were injured. .
According to reports, an eyewitness said both vehicles had a head-on collision when the driver of the bus overtake another vehicle at a sharp bend.
The Kogi State Sector Commander of the Federal Road Safety Commission, FRSC, Mr Solomon Agure, while confirming the accident, said that some staff of the ceramics company died in the company’s vehicle .
He said the staff worked overnight and closed in the morning but unfortunately when their staff bus was taking them home, their vehicle was involved in a head-on collision with another vehicle and three persons died on the spot. “Those that were injured were rushed to the hospital,” he said.
In a statement, the President of the Civil Society Group, Amb. Habeeb Muhammad, while commiserating with the families and victims stressed that no fewer than seven staff of the Chinese firm died in the road accident.
According to him, neither compensation nor medical care was given to the families and victims.
‘’Unfortunately, as we commiserate with the affected families and victims, not less than seven BN Ceramic’s workers died on 28th January 2021 as a result of an overcrowded company’s 18 seater bus, made to carrying 28 passengers, which rammed into another oncoming vehicle on Ajaokuta expressway, but the most painful and excruciating fact is that including the dead and injured were abandoned by the BN Ceramic management till date,
‘’Neither compensation nor medical care, a proving evidence of their gross ineptitude and inhumanity.
‘’We therefore call on the Inspector General of Police, Public Complaint Commission, National Human Rights Commission and other labor rights organizations to come to the rescue of these dying and endangered Nigerian youths.
‘’Lastly, these two companies: BN Ceramic Limited and West African Ceramic Limited are unrepentant and determined to wreck more havoc against the workers, who are more seen as slaves rather than staff. Injustice anywhere is a huge threat to Justice Everywhere. We have emphatically spoken,’’ he said.
It could be recalled that the CSO recently called on Federal Government to urgently intervene in the serial injustices and gross violations of human rights and factory laws 2004 of the Federal Republic of Nigeria perpetrated by the leading Chinese ceramic industry in Ajaokuta, Kogi State named BN Ceramic Limited and another adjacent to it is the Western African Ceramic Limited respectively.