Civil servants in Osun have opposed the ongoing staff audit following a disagreement between them and the consultant on the mode of the auditing, among other issues.
The verification exercise commenced a few days ago and has been going on daily at the Centre for Black Culture and International Understanding, Osogbo.
It continued last Thursday when workers of the Hospitals Management Board were expected to appear before the auditing consultant firm. The staff audit is being carried out by the Osun State government through a consulting firm, Saibot Consulting.
Few minutes after the workers had converged at the venue for the exercise, it was gathered that some of them became uncomfortable with the process and disagreed with the consultant on the mode and other logistics involved in the auditing.
Consequently, the area became rowdy as some workers started singing solidarity songs and declared that they were no longer interested in the auditing process.
The angry workers were said to have parked their academic credentials and stormed out of the venue.
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The Osun State government had mandated its workers to go for the staff audit but the organised labour in the state kicked against the exercise, alleging that they were not adequately consulted.
However, the state government assured that the exercise was not a witch-hunt but an effort to reposition the state civil service to be one of the best in the country.
The academic and non-academic staff of Osun State-owned tertiary institutions on the other hand had called on the state government to decentralise the planned staff audit of the workforce.
The unions threatened to embark on industrial action if the consulting firm fails to reason and put the concerns they have raised into consideration.
The academy staff union of the three institutions, ASUP, COEASU, NASU, SSANIP of Osun State Polytechnic, Iree, Osun State College of Technology, Esa-Oke and Osun State College of Education, Ila-Orangun, said there was the need for an urgent review of the staff audit.
Fatai Afolabi, chairman of the Academy Staff Union of the Polytechnic, called the governor to direct the consulting firm on the need to decentralise the exercise.
Afolabi, who spoke on behalf of other union leaders, said that the centralisation of the whole exercise at the Centre for Black Culture and International Understanding in Osogbo, will add more burden on workers at this time when people are battling with the hardship occasioned by fuel subsidy removal.
