Casual staff engaged by the Abuja Environmental Protection Board (AEPB) have decried that they are being excluded and marginalised by the management of the board.
This was disclosed by some of the affected members of staff, who preferred anonymity, at the weekend.
They claimed that most of them had been working with the board as casual staff for over 10 years and that they recently got wind of a directive from the former minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), who has been re-appointed, Senator Bala Mohammed, to regularise all casual staff in the FCT administration’s parastatals and agencies.
They however expressed shock that rather than confirm their appointments and make them permanent staff of the board as directed, they started seeing new faces who they heard were casual staff and whose appointments had been regularised and made permanent, lamenting that the board by its actions had not considered those of them that had served it for many years under stressful, unhealthy and risky conditions.
“Tribalism and godfatherism cannot be ruled out in this scenario. We expected that preference should have been given to those who have spent more time with the board, rather than the top guns going to bring people from their hometowns to take up employment while we do the hard jobs, putting our lives at risk,” they said.
Reacting to the allegation, the director, AEPB, Dr. Abubakar Shehu Yabo said it was a misguided conclusion, stressing that he was not aware of such a development.
“I’m not aware of anybody going round to pick some names for regularisation. All I know is that there was initial employment after which some people could not report to duty and were replaced by some casual staff. That could be the factor they may be using as a basis for their argument,” he said.
Yabo added that he was the one who had approached the minister with a request that the board should regularise some of its casual staff and that the minister approved the request but unfortunately, it could not be implemented due to budgetary shortfalls.
?He however assured that the matter had been taken care of in the 2011 budget and that the file was already in the office of the director of training for regularisation of the casual staff.
The AEPB boss further assured that the allegation would be investigated and appropriate action would be taken where necessary, to ensure that the board is treading the right path.?