CRIN workers end five months strike

The Ibadan, Oyo State-based Cocoa Research Institute of Nigeria located in Idi-Ayunre, which has been embroiled in industrial crisis since July this year had a lease of life on Tuesday as the striking workers and the management resolved to end the five-month-old industrial action.
Determine to restore peace to the 49-year-old research institute, the 929 workers of the Institute were however advised to return to work immediately and submit themselves for staff audit under the Federal Government’s Integrated Personal Payroll System as a pre-condition for collection of their arrears of salary.
At the peace parley, jointly brokered by the National Secretariat of the Senior Staff Association of Universities Teaching Hospital, Research Institutes and Associated Institutions and the Federal Ministry of Labour and Productivity, all the parties agreed that nobody would be intimidated or victimized as an aftermath of the strike.
The SSAUTHRIAI mission, led by the union’s National Secretary, Moshood Akinade, and the government team, led by a Director from the Ministry, Alhaji A. Ajuwon, reassured the aggrieved workers that as part of the peace efforts, the suspension order placed on four CRIN Directors by the Board of Management had been lifted unconditionally.
Similarly, all the 68 security officers of the Institute hitherto displaced had been ordered to return to their duty posts.
Speaking at the peace meeting, the Executive Director of the Institute, Prof. Malachy Akoroda, expressed gratitude to the mediating team for their “genuine reconciliatory moves” while promising to keep his own side of the terms of the resolutions.
“With today’s parley, there is no doubt that a workable peace has returned to CRIN.”
Akoroda also thanked the workers for resolving to sheath their sword and return to work in the overall interest of the Institute.