Protesting staff shut down ITF

Staff of the Industrial Training Fund (ITF) staged a protest and shutdown their office in Abuja yesterday over alleged financial impropriety and misappropriation of funds by the Director General, Mrs. Juliet Chukkas-Onaeko.
A notice circulated to staff of the Fund obtained by Daily Trust directed all staff to embark on a three-day warning strike starting from yesterday till December 2.
The notice, signed by the President of the Senior Staff Association of Communications, Transport and Corporations (SSACTAC), Comrade Kayode Atakija, and the Association’s Chairman, Comrade Ishaya Audu, indicated that the strike action was necessitated by the inability of the DG and the management to respond to the demands of the staff on issues bothering on welfare, financial impropriety and misappropriation of fund.
When Daily Trust visited the headquarters of the Fund, it was under lock with a team of heavily armed police officers stationed at the entrance.
Students who came to sign their logbooks were left stranded outside as they were not allowed to gain entry into the building.
A staff who spoke in confidence said she was not aware of the strike as she came to the office in the morning and discovered that the gates had been locked and staff denied entry into the building by the union members.
Daily Trust could not immediately get a reaction from the DG, but there had been previous media wars on the crisis rocking the Fund.
Recently, an NGO known as Agenda for New Nigeria (ANN), raised an alarm that there is a calculated atrempt to tarnish the image of the Director General.
The President of the organisation, Dr. Sam Abubakar, had said the attacks on the DG are informed by local politics of gender, ethnicity and religion.