By Ndubuisi Francis in Abuja
The Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) has denied being involved in a purported round of verification for former employees of the defunct Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN).
The agency said in a statement issued by its Head, Public Communications, Amina Tukur Othman, that its attention had been drawn to attempts by a group of former staff of the defunct PHCN to link the Bureau to a purported verification exercise for the disengaged staff of the company.
Acccording to the statement, the group of former employees of the defunct company had circulated various correspondences to their members on the said verification.
The Bureau said: “In the correspondences captioned: BPE-Notice To All Disengaged Staff Of Ex-PHCN Staff and written in poor English Language, the group represented by one Ndiwe Louis Okechukwu requested former staff of the defunct PHCN to visit designated venues in the country with relevant documents and a processing fee of N1,000 each.
“It also said BPE has released 10,000 forms with a security number to all the zones across the country and that the forms must be returned in hard copies with specific requirements and after processing, payment would commence until the whole 48,000 staff are paid.
Reacting to the correspondences, the privatisation agency said: “For the avoidance of doubt, the BPE is not conducting another verification exercise for the defunct staff of the PHCN and is not in any way connected with the purported verification by the group.
“It must be noted that each time the Bureau carries out verification of former staff of the defunct PHCN, adequate publicity is carried out with the involvement of the National Union of Electricity Employees (NUEE) and the Senior Staff Association of Electricity and Allied Companies (SSAEC). But in the purported verification by the group, these are absent.
“BPE wishes to dissociate itself from the purported verification and warns all former staff of the PHCN and general public to beware! To be warned is to be forearmed!”
