Nigeria to lay off one in five civil servants

[Richard Akindele]

ABUJA (Reuters) - Nigeria will lay off one in five civil servants by the end of the year but grant a pay rise to those who keep their jobs in an effort to improve efficiency, the minister in charge of civil service reform said.

Some 33,000 out of 160,000 civil servants in Africa's most populous country will lose their jobs as part of a home-grown programme of free-market reforms, Nasir Ahmad el-Rufai said on Thursday. A spokeswoman confirmed the comments on Friday.

Nigerian newspapers quoted el-Rufai as saying the federal government had earmarked 50 billion naira to finance the "house-cleaning" of the civil service, much of it to be used on severance packages.

The plan also includes the recruitment of about 1,000 better qualified staff this year. El-Rufai did not disclose the size of the pay rise that civil servants who survive the cull will enjoy.

He was quoted as saying the 33,000 would include workers identified as medically unfit, guilty of serious misconduct, inefficient or those whose jobs have been either outsourced or abolished.

He also mentioned those who failed promotion examinations or who lacked entry qualifications or mandatory skills.

El-Rufai said Nigeria had inherited a bloated, "bottom-heavy" civil service and a widespread problem of "ghost workers" from decades of corrupt military dictatorship.

Nigeria returned to civilian rule in 1999.

El-Rufai is one of a team of economic reformers brought in by President Olusegun Obasanjo in 2003 to try and turn around the oil producing country's collapsed finances.

Under the team's management, Nigeria has accumulated $36 billion in foreign reserves by saving up windfall earnings from high oil prices, and clinched a landmark debt relief deal under which rich creditor nations wrote off $18 billion.

But the reforms have yet to translate into better living conditions for Nigeria's 140 million people, most of whom live on less than $1 a day. Economists say the next priority has to be job creation if the reforms are to gain popularity and take root.

Reuters

[Richard Akindele]

Massive job cuts are underway in Nigeria as the authorities seek to restructure the country's civil service to improve efficiency and cut down on costs. Nigeria's largest trade union has rejected the move.

The Nigeria Labor Congress, the largest worker's group in Nigeria, has rejected the planned reduction of 33,000 workers by the government.

The Nigerian government said Friday it will lay off about 33,000 civil servants by the end of this year, in an effort to make the country's civil service more efficient. The Nigeria Labor Congress warns that the planned lay off which would affect 20 percent of Nigeria's public workers could have grave repercussions for the country.

"The Nigeria Labor Congress restates its opposition to the drastic cut in the federal public service being contemplated by President Obasanjo's administration under its broad reform agenda," said George Odah, the secretary-general of the NLC. "Any retrenchment of the magnitude described by the committee's chairman at this material time, will be too costly for the country in terms of social and economic terms."

The union says it is unimpressed with the offer of a pay rise for those to be retained. Odah says the layoffs run contrary to the government's promise to create more jobs.

"The contemplated retrenchment is ill-advised, ill-timed and unacceptable," he added. "It is inconceivable that an administration that has enunciated employment creation as a major hallmark of its reform would proceed to offload such a large number of people at a go. The inability to protect existing jobs shows that this government is paying mere lip service to their avowed objective of creating 12 million jobs."

The national executive committee of the Nigeria Labor Congress is scheduled to meet in emergency session next week to discuss what a union official referred to as 'an appropriate response' to the planned cuts.

Under the ongoing reforms, the government has removed subsidies and privatized inefficient state-owned enterprises. But the reforms have yet to translate into better living conditions for Nigeria's 140 million people, most of whom live on less than $1 a day.

[Richard Akindele]

Govt Raises Workers' Pay By 25 Percent as NLC Backs Planned
THE Federal Government plans to raise civil servants' salaries by 25 per cent from January next year, even as the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), yesterday, expressed support for the Joint National Public Service Negotiating Council (JNPSNC) to embark on a national strike should the Federal Government fail to halt the mass sack in the public service.

Besides, Congress accused government of violating the country's labour laws in its plan to disengage 33,000 workers.

Announcing government's plan to increase workers' salaries in Abuja, NLC President, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, said: "The NLC is happy to note that the Federal Government has decided to increase workers' salaries in the country by 25 percent in January 2007.

"The Federal Government has now accepted to increase wages by 25 per cent once this exercise is over. We welcome this increase although it is coming three years after it had been negotiated by the NLC under the Chief Philip Asiodu Panel.

"If the agreed 25 per cent increase in 2001 and the subsequent 15 per cent increase in 2002 had been implemented, the system would have eventually returned to single digit and routine wage adjustments. Even with this increase and the previous 12.5 per cent, government still needs to increase wages further to put the public sector wage regime on the part of relativity with the private sector."

Congress, however, kicked against Federal Government's decision, to borrow N50 billion from the World Bank to finance the settlement of gratuities of workers to be sacked.

According to Oshiomhole, "any spending on this must be drawn from within the system through the reserves. Borrowing to retrench is unproductive. The N50 billion loan being contemplated in addition to other cases of piece meal external borrowing is capable of taking the nation back to the dark days of debt overhang. If we must borrow, it must be for productive capital projects, which this retrenchment is not."

Strike

On its plan to lead the total strike against the mass sack, Oshiomhole said: "In the NEC of the NLC, a decision was taken to review the situation and the meeting decided to strategise on how the Congress can support the efforts of the affiliate unions in the public sector to stop the mass sack, especially as due process was not followed in reaching that decision.

"The unions in the public sector have canvassed valid arguments against the approach of the Federal Government to this retrenchment and have issued an ultimatum to back up a demand for the convening of a meeting with government. The NLC endorses the concerns canvassed by the public sector unions."

He, however, said the NLC remained alarmed by the large number of civil servants to be affected, saying: "Offloading such a large number of persons into the unemployment market in one fell swoop at this time is certainly not in the national interest. The shocks this retrenchment will create are bound to compound the poverty and unemployment levels. For a country that faces a serious and unprecedented unemployment crisis, rationality in polity making requires that the overall employment level should not be further eroded.

"The logic of demand and supply should convince even the most incurable market fundamentalists that 33,000 additional entrants into the job market would create unmitigated shocks.

"The private sector is currently not absorbing labour. Indeed, the private sector is shedding labour because of the harsh business environment compounded by the dumping of imported products, affecting the market share of local producers.

"The evidence also shows that the small scale sector and self employed operators in the economy are not doing well, which calls to question the labour absorbing capacity of the informal sector.

"Therefore, there is no expectation that those to be retrenched will find jobs in the private sector even if the Federal Government were to implement the promised retraining programme.

"In the light of the serious level of unemployment, this kind of redundancy agenda requires a phased approach that is driven by sensitivity to the overall socio-economic impact.

"In poverty terms, retrenching 33,000 civil servants will have implications for the survival of an additional 231,000 spouses and children as well as about 100,000 extended family dependents.

"It will also lead to higher mortality, worsen the school dropout ratio, escalate social tension, increase the crime rate and exacerbate such social dysfunctions like prostitution as coping strategies among young dependants," he said.

Vanguard.

[Richard Akindele]

A federal government panel and workers' representatives yesterday reached an agreement for the government to halt the on-going sack of 33,000 employees and the workers to shelve their planned industrial action.

But the government delegation deferred signing the document until the Head of Civil Service of the Federation, Alhaji Yayale Ahmed, approved the agreement. However, the national president of the Nigeria Civil Service Union, Comrade Fidelis Edeh, said that they are giving the government up to 9:00am today to sign the pact or the planned industrial action will go ahead.

The NCSU president warned that the trade unions would not tolerate any waste of time on the part of the federal government, saying both parties need to respect the agreement. He said union leaders will today meet with staff in the sector and brief them on the outcome of yesterday's meeting and that the decision of the workers on the matter would determine the nature of the industrial action.

Comrade Ed eh told Daily Trust that the fact that both the parties agreed on how to best maintain industrial peace and harmony in the sector made the meeting a success but that failure of government to honour its own part of the bargain will affect the progress made at the meeting. The trade unions had given the federal government a five-day ultimatum to halt the on-going sack of workers in the public sector or face an industrial action. The ultimatum expires today.

However, worried by the adverse effects of such industrial action, Yayale Ahmed, summoned a meeting of stakeholders to settle the issue amicably. While declaring open the meeting in Abuja, Ahmed assured the representatives of the unions that the issue would be adequately looked into. He said that over the last one year his office had intimated the unions with the current reform programmes of government especially as it concerned On the part of the unions, they had requested for the criteria for the right-sizing exercise whi ch we obliged and they also made recommendations to that effect," he said.

He, however, expressed regret that the turn up of event in the last few weeks had not gone down well with the union adding that the exercise was inevitable."My attempt in justifying the action of government is not because of over blotted civil service rather it is for an effective service that can meet up with the global demands," he said.

Daily Trust.