Posted by From Juliana Taiwo in Abuja on
Joint National Public Service Negotiating Council has said the agreement reached with government last Thursday, at an emergency.....
Joint National Public Service Negotiating Council has said the agreement reached with government last Thursday, at an emergency meeting called by Head of Service of the Federation, Alhaji Yayale Ahmed, to put the disengagement of 33,000 workers on hold could not be relied upon as basis for negotiation, because no agreement was signed by parties to the dispute.
Addressing a press conference at the weekend, President, Nigerian Civil Service Union (NCSU), Comrade Fidelis Edeh, said the meeting was inconclusive.
He said it was based on the condition that the Council will be co-opted into the exercise and a promise that it would be made to follow the Senate Committee on Establishment and Public Service Recommendations, and made to strictly comply with relevant labour laws.
He said involvement of the unions would enrich the process, as workers would have a sense of belonging and see the retrenchment exercise as normal and routine steps taken with the sole aim of re-positioning and re-packaging the civil service to deliver on its mandate as the engine room of national growth.
Edeh said sack letters earlier issued has been overtaken by events, saying the meeting has rendered them ineffective, null and void. He, therefore, urged workers to disregard such letters.
The communiquÈ read at the end of the meeting said, "the central issue discussed was civil service reforms in the context of the impending rationalisation of 33,000 federal civil service employees.
"During deliberations, it was observed that the process did not comply with the extant labour laws and recommendations of the Senate after a public hearing on the matter was conducted. It was also noted that some of the concepts which informed guidelines of the Bureau of Public Service Reform (BPSR) needed to be further re-visited."
Edeh said both government and the Joint Council agreed that process leading to the mass disengagement be re-structured and be made to correspond with extant labour laws and Senate recommendations.
He said the unions have secured government's clearance to fully engage the Public Service reform team on policy objectives, which informed the guidelines, to provide a better way of addressing inefficiency and over-bloating, which government is citing for the mass purge.
"The meeting has given us the leeway to publicly engage the Mallam el-Rufai's team on the merits and de-merits of the mass purge exercise.
The development is good for the system, because we may even discover that at the end of the day, government may not need to sack, rather, it may need to re-deploy or re-train workers," he said.