Court adjourns suit against Bua to July 10

Justice Anthony Ubaka of the National Industrial Court (NIC), Lagos has fixed July 10, 2019 to hear a suit filed by 404 former employees of Bua International Limited for alleged non payment of their entitlements.

Sylvester Akasan, who spoke on behalf of the workers, said they were disengaged from Bua International Limited and engaged to another food company called Quintessential Food.

According to him, they filed the action because Bua didn’t pay them in line with its handbook and to let Bua management know the amount remaining balance.

“In the new company, we were handed over to, we worked barely for three months and we down tools for twenty three working days and because of that they said they would pay us redundancy fee which Bua did not pay so that they could be able to make their profits,” Akasan said.

He added that the new company still breached the agreement of payment and “we brought the two parties to court for refusing to pay us according to our agreement.”

He further alleged that Bua management wanted to stop by praying the president of the court to transfer the case to another judge, where the management staff of Bua had filed it’s own case against the company.

According to him, both cases can run separately. “A letter was written to the court president but we wrote a counter that our case should remain where it is. We therefore want the court to help us redeem our claims,” he stated.

In the letter addressed to the president, NIC Abuja with the heading: “Objection to the application for transfer pursuant to order 62 rule 18 National Industrial Court Rules 2017”, the claimants urged him to discountenance the 2nd defendants application for transfer and consolidation and allow the two cases which are already at different stages of trial to continue undisturbed.

This, the claimants said is the most efficient way to go about those cases in view of the peculiar circumstances of the two.