Governor Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna State has disengaged 4,000 staff across the 23 Local Government Areas of the state as part of downsizing.
This action has been greeted with knocks.
Over 4000 staff across 23 local governments received their disengagement letters on April 6. This came barely four years after over 25,000 primary school teachers and other categories of staff were relieved of their appointments without receiving their benefits.
The President of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Comrade Ayuba Wabba has called on the Kaduna State Government to reverse the mass sack of workers in the state, describing it as an ”arbitrary and cruel” decision.
He said the decisions of the Kaduna State Government to give effect to compulsory retirement of officers that are 50-years-old and above; compulsory retirement of officers on Grade Level 14 and above, even if they are less than fifty years violated the fundamental human and trade union rights of Kaduna State workers.
“Others are conversion to casual workers for officers on Grade Level 01 – 06 and the directive that no Local Government in Kaduna State shall have more than 50 staff strength. We understand that right now redundancy letters are being issued to workers caught in the web of this very arbitrary and cruel decision.
Wabba, furthermore, called the attention of the Kaduna State Government to the clause in the redundancy letter issued to workers, affected by the mass sack that all the entitlements of the affected workers would be paid in due course, describing this as being in conflict with the provisions of the Labour Act on redundancy.
The Kaduna State Chapter of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) vehemently condemned the illegal mass sack/retirement of the 2,118 Local Government staff and yet another over 1,600 staff of the Primary Health Centers, by the state government.
State Publicity Secretary, of the party, Abraham Alberah Catoh in a statement said the action by the governor is outrightly unlawful, callous and smacks off the insensitivity of the APC government to the plight of the good people of the state.
According to him, “It is disheartening that a government which asserts itself as a believer of the rule of law, however, never hesitates to break the same law in pursuit of its unscrupulous policies, based on their whims and caprices.”
He called for a reversal of the mass and unethical sack of all those affected and payment of their entitlements by the Kaduna State Government.
One of the affected staff, Aliyu Aminu of the works department who was retired from service on 1st April, 2021 called on the government to quickly pay them their benefits for their survival especially since the holy month of Ramadan has come.
