Bayo Onanuga, Managing Director, News Agency of Nigeria, on Monday said the agency was working hard to increase its internal revenue towards improving workers welfare.
Onanuga, who addressed workers at the Lagos office, unveiled some of the frontiers the agency was exploring to boost its internal revenue to complement dwindling government funding.
The managing director spoke to the workers ahead of the threat by the three staff unions to embark on a warning strike on July 26.
The unions had earlier given an ultimatum of July 25 for management to meet their demands, top of which is the welfare of workers.
Onanuga said NAN had the potential to be self-sufficient, adding that the news agency was working towards achieving it through the expansion of its SMS news and other media content services.
He said: “For our SMS platform, we have only 2,000 subscribers.
“We need to expand our subscriber base to about 200,000 users.
“NAN is sitting on a goldmine, but why are we not making money with N30 daily subscription?
“We will be able to make N6 million daily or half of that if we have 100,000 subscribers.”
On staff condition of service, Onanuga said its implementation was beyond what NAN management could do alone.
He said: “From my investigation, the new condition of service, the Ministry of Information, Ministry of Finance and Budget Office must endorse it.”
On promotion, he said workers in the Agency had been shortchanged in the past as their promotion was usually dated July instead of January.
The managing director said all documents concerning the issue have been forwarded to the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation for payment.
On training, he explained that within the limit of its resources, the Agency has been sending staff on various training.
He added that management was also scouting for relevant organisations to provide specialised training for the staff to boost their productivity.
Onanuga, therefore, said there was no justifiable reason for the workers to go on strike, advising them to show more understanding with the management.
He also advised them to put on their thinking caps in finding a better way of improving the Agency’s finances so as to improve their welfare.