AS LABOUR TACKLES EL-RUFAI…

The Nigerian labour Congress (NLC) has started a five-day warning strike over massive retrenchment of civil servants in Kaduna State in the last six years. It is estimated that since the time he assumed office to date, Governor Nasir El-Rufai in a bid to reform the state public service has succeeded in laying off about 60,000 staff. In 2017, El-Rufai began his retrenchment policies with the sacking of over 25,000 primary school teachers believed to have failed an aptitude test. This was followed by another set of local government staff and traditional rulers in their thousands. You may wish to know that the over 50,000 staff who were axed by the state government in 2017 have not yet received their severance benefits when El Rufai struck again and wielded the big stick on 4000 local government staff last month.

In an interview, Governor El-Rufai says if the state government pays salaries from its monthly federal allocation, the balance won’t be enough to provide basic infrastructural development to over five million people. This analysis proves justifiable. However, El-Rufai was quoted to have said that under his watch the state’s dwindling internally generated revenue has reached an appreciable level. The governor said the state can now boast of up to 50bn internally generated revenue annually. This sounds good. But unless the state governor is clever by half, the state can use the internally generated revenue to fund its infrastructural development. The governor’s retrenchment policies have also come at a wrong time when the state is grappling with myriad insecurity challenges such as banditry and kidnapping. By throwing thousands of workers from the state’s payroll, El-Rufai is indirectly inviting more insecurity to the state.

Even in the cause of his rationalisation policies, the governor has bent rules and regulations governing the condition of retirement. For instance, the pension laws prescribed the mandatory years a civil servant should put into the service before he retires. In the case of Kaduna State, a civil servant is expected to retire at the age of 50 instead of 60. This action is a flagrant abuse of pension acts. He has also come up with the casualisation of level three to six staff which is against the international labour laws and currently before the national assembly for deliberation. The NLC should be commended for standing by the state civil servants who are increasingly becoming the victims of El-Rufai’s rationalisation policies.

Ibrahim Mustapha, Pambegua, Kaduna State