Following the recommendations made by the presidential committee on the rationalisation and restructuring of federal government ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) in order to prune them down by as much 40 per cent, there is apprehension now that 24 per cent of the civil service workforce, which stands at 120,000, may be retrenched.?
While most of the 38 agencies that have been recommended for scrapping and the 52 to be merged are yet to be made public and may have varying numbers of employees, the Office of the Head of Service of the Federation has estimated there are 120,000 people employed by the Civil Service Commission in the 263 establishments.
Though the government has admitted it has poor records on the exact number of its employees, the figure of 30,000 (24%) workforce facing retrenchment is based on assumptions that the workers are evenly distributed between the 263 agencies and that all those in the 38 agencies to be abolished will have to go with at least half of those in the 52 to be merged.
Tope Ajakaiye, the spokesman for the Office of the Head of Service, however, told LEADERSHIP SUNDAY that workers can only be retrenched in special circumstances because there is provision for retrenchment or severance pay in the civil service rulebook.
But the Nigeria Labour Congress has said the retrenchment was a possible implication of the recommendations made by the Stephen Oronsaye-led committee that is seeking to cut the number of agencies and parastatals from 263 to 161.
Meanwhile, Ilyasu Gashinbaki, a global partner and CEO of an accounting firm, Discovery Cycle Professionals, has said there are no acceptable standards for what a severance pay should be because everything depends on what the labour unions are able to negotiate with the government.
Ajakaiye added: “Retrenchment can only take place under special arrangement and there could be a special package.
“Retrenchment is not in the rulebook of the civil service. But if we are talking about retirement, that is in the rulebook and what you are paid as pension will depend on the number of years you have spent in the service and what you contributed to your pension savings.”
The secretary-general of the NLC, Owei Lakemfa, who also spoke to LEADERSHIP SUNDAY, said: “This is not about what who should get. We are talking about retrenchment. Let us say there are 500,000 civil servants; 400,000 are our members.”
Lakemfa said the agreement on minimum wage signed by the union with the government did not cover the issue of severance pay that should be contained in the rulebook.
Gashinbaki of the accounting firm, for his part, said: “If the total income of an employee is N600,000, labour should be able to negotiate a severance package of at least 300 per cent for such a person in addition to gratuities.”
He said:“The ways severance packages are determined are products of negotiations. If labour does not want to go into argument, they should be looking at what they can get for all cadres of civil servants. Those in levels 3 to 7 are in one group and levels 8 to 17 in another.
“The Oransaye report took eight months to write and it could take two years to implement. It aimed to reduce the cost of governance and came up with facts. Labour must address this. In mergers and acquisitions of private companies, the regulators come up with how it is done.
“They determine issues of employment, retrenchment, hence compatibility of institutions to be integrated.? It is easier in the private sector because it is about money. In the public sector, it is about facts and political consideration. It will not be easy in this case.”
Some workers in the EFCC, which employs just fewer than 300 people, and the ICPC with about 500 employees, two institutions recommended for abolition, who spoke with LEADERSHIP SUNDAY on anonymity, have expressed concerns about the Orosanye report.
A legal luminary in one of the agencies who also spoke to LEADERSHIP SUNDAY in confidence said: “A total sack of the two institutions is impossible because they were set up by an Act of the National Assembly. The federal government will have to abolish the law to be able do so, but the lawmakers may not be in support of this.”