BimbolaOyesola ,[email protected]

The Non-Academic Staff Union of Educational and Associated Institutions (NASU) has cautioned the Federal Government against putting jobs of workers in the parastatals, commissions and agencies in jeopardy through the implementation of the Steve Oronsaye Report. 

The 2012 Presidential Committee on Rationalisation and Restructuring of Federal Government Parastatals, Commissions and Agencies, referred to as “Oronsaye Report,” recommended the scrapping, abolition, mergers and reversion of some to departments of ministries.

But NASU, which noted that the implementation was being pushed up as an attempt to fulfill one of the conditionalities for the new loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), said  government should jettison the advice as it would put more families and households on the poverty line.

General secretary of NASU, Peters Adeyemi, said the union sees the decision to implement the report as a licence and cover to carry out retrenchment in some sections of the public service, which he said is not acceptable to the union.

“The policy direction, which is ill-timed is another attempt by the advisers and drivers of the policy to pit the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari against workers and their unions. It is going to bring about job losses and poverty and this is not the time to throw people into the over-saturated unemployment market,” he said.

He noted that, on the face value, the implementation of the report may portray an attempt to streamline bureaucracy and cut cost, but labour’s past experiences with reforms aimed at cutting down bureaucratic cost had always ended in job losses.

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He lamented that bloated cost in Nigeria, which is always on the side of recurrent expenditure, has often been hinged on civil servants’ salaries and wages, but rather attributed corruption as one of the key factors. He said, “The principal factor that is responsible for bloated recurrent expenditure is salaries and allowances of political office holders. There are duplication of functions among these officials, who include but not limited to ministers, ministers of state, special advisers and special assistants and their retinue of personal staff. This was well captured in the report of the Adamu Fika Committee set up by former President Goodluck Jonathan to review Public Sector Reforms.”

The NASU scribe insisted that salaries and wages of civil servants are not at the top of the list, stating that the recent minimum wage, in real terms did not bring any significant increase in the take-home pay of public servants, as there has been a freeze in employment and wage increases spanning several years.

“The factors responsible for the increase in the cost of public sector bureaucracy are known to government. The reality is that there are continuous statutory retirements and deaths of workers without replacements. These should be expected to bring down the real public sector wage bill,” he said.

He warned that, if government must go ahead with the policy, its implementation must be transparent from the planning to the implementation stages through bringing on board critical stakeholders, especially trade unions that represent workers in the affected institutions.

Adeyemi insisted that government has to show workers and their unions a concrete plan on how jobs of workers in affected institutions will be protected within the framework of the implementation of the policy.

He tasked President Buhari to have a rethink of the policy direction of his government.