•Retrain redundant workers, provide entrepreneurship training and funding for workers with business ideas – counsels Utomi
THE Nigeria Employers’ Consultative Association has faulted the decision of the state government to lay off some of its workers, stressing that it’s part of the social responsibility of the government to provide works for the masses.
The Director-General of NECA, Dr Timothy Olawale, made this known yesterday while reacting to the ongoing downsizing of the public service by the el-Rufai government.
Olawale urged state governments to take a cue from the NECA, whose members had pledged to try to retain their workers as much as possible amid the economic downturn in the country.
He stated, “So, the government should even be the very last to consider this issue of laying off of workers. What we would advise the government to do is to set their priorities right,” he said, adding that there were many avoidable expenditure heads that could be done away with.
He said, “Workers’ welfare, retention of workers should be top on their priorities. For political reasons, many politicians, many governors were recruiting and putting those who were not supposed to be in civil service there. The wages overload is not on the workers’ salaries; it is on political appointees.
“Check most of the states, check the number of advisers and special assistants that are advising the advisers – all those appendages of government appointees; check what goes into their purses every months. Many of the political appointees that are servicing the elected officials in the legislature and executive are doing nothing.”
In his own case, Pat Utomi, a renowned professor of political economy, said it would not be right of the government to abandon the public service workers, especially with the states of the unemployment market and the economy generally.
He urged the government to find a way of retraining redundant workers for other positions that required human capital or to provide entrepreneurship training and funding for workers with business ideas.
Utomi said, “In state institutions, sometimes people are just hired to give the impression that employment should be created, with no clarity on what they should do so their productivity suffers terribly.”
A former President, Association of National Accountants of Nigeria, Dr Sam Nzekwe, warned Kaduna and other state governments against sacking workers.
He said it would worsen unemployment and the security problem in the country, in an interview with Punch newspaper.
He suggested that the government should look inward to find another solution instead of sacking workers.
Nzekwe said, “When government resorts to sacking workers, what will other entrepreneurs do?
“They should look at the cost of governance. When they look at it that the commissioners and all the government officials have personal assistants, they have vehicles, drivers, these raise the cost of governance.”
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