…sues FG to NIC, case for hearing Feb. 27
An atmosphere of uncertainty and fear has enveloped the Federal Secretariat in Abuja with thousands of public servants left in confusion following the insistence of the government to fire some 3,500 workers.
In a move to forestall the pending sack, organised labour under the aegis of Association of Senior Civil Servants of Nigeria (ASCSN) in a Suit No. NICN/459/2016 had dragged the Federal Government to the National Industrial Court (NIC) with hearing fixed for Wednesday, February 27, 2017.
A middle level civil servant with the Federal Ministry of Labour and Productivity, told BusinessDay on Monday that since the news of the pending sack broke, many civil servants not certain of their positions have been moving in and out of various offices within the secretariat, in a bid to secure their jobs.
“I can tell you in confidence that I have seen moves here and there across offices. People are trying to leverage on who they know to retain their jobs. Nobody wants to lose a job under the current economic situation. Quite frankly, a lot of us are jolted by the news,” said the source who craved anonymity.
The government last week restated its plans to sack 3,500 workers, hinging it on irregular and unauthorised appointment into the federal civil service.
Reacting to the development yesterday, Alade Lawal, Secretary General of the Association of Senior Civil Servants of Nigeria (ASCSN) flayed the Federal Government for trying to hide under the guise of unauthorised appointment to sack workers.
Lawal expressed shock that the government was planning to send 3,500 employees to the oversaturated labour market at a period when millions of Nigerians were dying of starvation, some committing suicide because of harsh economic conditions imposed on them by the same government.
“The greatest tragedy of this insensitive planned retrenchment is that the Association has already taken the Federal Government to court on this matter and the least we expect in a normal democratic society is for the government to allow the court process to be pursued to its logical conclusion and in the interim maintain status quo ante on the matter.
“It must be emphasised that if citizens begin to disrespect the judicial process and resort to self-help as this Government has been doing, sooner or later, the entire society will be engulfed in anarchy,” Lawal said.
According to him, when the association got wind that the Federal Government had concluded plans to sack about 6,000 workers because they were alleged to have been illegally recruited by the last administration, it filed a suit in the National Industrial Court (NIC) to forestall the move.
It added that the case in suit No. NICN/459/2016 filed by the ASCSN at the NIC, Abuja, against the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation came up for hearing on February 1, 2017 and had been adjourned to Monday 27, February 2017.
“Since Nigeria is practicing democracy based on the rule of law, the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation should, pending the outcome of the court process, stop further action on the impending mass sack of 6,000 workers, which the government is now telling the public that it is 3,500 it wants to disengage in order to mellow down their anger.
“We cannot continue with this culture of impunity where government officials see themselves as demigods who are above the laws of the country,” he said.
The secretary general argued that even if the workers were recruited from certain part of the country, what the government should do was to employ people from the other part so as to balance the deficit instead of throwing 6,000 helpless workers into the job market.
“At any rate, was any due diligence done to establish whether these workers were engaged in the first instance because their area has been marginalised in the past,” the association queried.
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