Posted by By Yomi Odunuga and Senan John Murray, Abuja on
From January 31, 2007 workers in the federal civil service will go home with fatter pay envelopes.....
From January 31, 2007 workers in the federal civil service will go home with fatter pay envelopes.
This news, however, comes with a flip side: More than 33,000 workers will lose their jobs this month to what the government termed 'house cleaning."
The Chairman, Bureau of Public Service Reforms, Malam Nasir el-Rufai, who announced this in Abuja on Thursday, did not disclose the percentage increase.
He also did not say if states would be advised to toe the Federal Government's line.
El-Rufai said, "As we take the next step, some very difficult, controversial decisions will be taken."
In 2002, President Olusegun Obasanjo announced that the least paid worker in states and the private sector would earn N5,500 while the least paid in the federal civil service would go home with N7,500.
Blaming the regime of former military President, Gen. Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida for the current rot in the civil service, he said that a comprehensive reform of the service was imperative.
Under the reform, el-Rufai, who is also the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, said no fewer that 33,000 out of the 160,000 workers in the service have been pencilled down for sack in the first phase of the exercise.
"We were supposed to have done it since last year, but we had no money in the budget for it. But this year, we have the money and they are to be retrenched. This is not a restructuring exercise," the minister said.
The workers, who are believed to have already been informed of their sack, will be paid all their severance benefits by next month.
El-Rufai added,"We are simply dealing with the consequences of Babangida reforms of 1988 in which appointment, promotion and discipline were decentralised and ministers simply went back to their villages and employed their relatives even when most of them had no qualifications.
"There was no monitoring mechanism at all on the ministers under the Babangida regime and that was why the they were simply doing what they wanted and today, we have inherited the mess the public service reforms of that administration left behind."
El-Rufai said that under Babangida, 'Permanent secretaries were made the equivalent of ministers; appointments, promotions and discipline were decentralised; and lastly, ministerial structures were fixed so that some departments were created and staff employed even where the need was not there."
Although he said that 'that was the way to go under a presidential system of government," el-Rufai said that the 'Babangida regime failed to establish a monitoring system that ought to have checked abuse of the system."
As a result of the "mess" left behind by the Babangida regime, " 60 per cent of the federal civil service is made up of people above the age of 43, 20 per cent ghost workers, and 70 per cent without Ordinary Level qualification."
He said that 1,000 graduates were expected to join the civil service before the end of the reforms, which is projected to cost N50billion.
While commending the Minister of Education, Mrs Obiageli Ezekwesili, for completing the reform of the Ministry of Solid Development, el-Rufai said it was her performance that led to the sack of 1,300 workers.
El-Rufai added that the next target in the reforms were the education; health; foreign affairs; internal affairs and transport ministries.
He said, "The president said we should put these on the front burner and complete the exercise by July 31."