Private investors are to determine the fate of workers of the Power Holding Company of Nigeria and its 17 successor companies, the Federal Government has said.
The Head of Public Communications, Bureau of Public Enterprises, Mr. Chigbo Anichebe, disclosed this in a telephone interview with one of our correspondents in Abuja on Monday.
The BPE had reportedly issued a letter to the chief executives of the power companies to submit names of 20,000 workers to be retrenched before the takeover of the firms by the successful private sector investors that won the bids for their sale.
Denying the allegation, Anichebe said the agency had never been responsible for the sacking of workers in any entity that it had privatised.
Anichebe added that the delay in paying the benefits accruing to the workers was as a result of their failure to submit their bank account numbers and Retirement Savings Account numbers.
Similarly, the Minister of Power, Prof. Chinedu Nebo, said neither the Federal Ministry of Power nor the BPE issued the directive that 20,000 workers should be retrenched.
Speaking through his Special Adviser on Media, Ms. Kande Daniel, the minister described as unfortunate the allegation of nocturnal meetings between the Federal Government and CEOs of PHCN successor companies.
According to Nebo, most of the officials cited in the report were on an official assignment outside the country.
He said funds for the payment of the workers' severance package were ready and that in a matter of weeks, the workers would be paid as part of the process of the takeover of the companies by private investors.
The minister observed that in the emerging scheme of things, the Federal Government would ensure that private sector operators adhered strictly to the nation's labour laws and treat Nigerian electricity workers with the dignity they deserved.
Anichebe, on his part, said, "There is no gainsaying that the government employs more than it needs but we have always insisted that it is the investors that decide who they want and who they don't want in the privatised entities.
"It is investors in the power companies that will declare any worker redundant. It is the investors that are going to issue fresh contracts to the workers they want. We are not involved in that process and no one will be sacked without payment of entitlements.
"The workers are the ones delaying the payment. The government is ready to pay the workers as soon as they submit their account numbers and RSA numbers."
However, in a telephone interview with one of our correspondents in Abuja on Monday, labour unions in PHCN insisted that BPE issued letters to the CEOs of the successor companies demanding the rightsizing of the employees.
The unions also threatened to vehemently resist any form of retrenchment of workers, stressing that the BPE would be held responsible for always misadvising the government on labour issues.
The President, Senior Staff Association of Electricity and Allied Companies, Mr. Bede Opara, said the union, in conjunction with the National Union of Electricity Employees, had written a protest letter to the ministries of Power and Labour and Productivity.
Insisting that the BPE issued a letter to the CEOs demanding them to right-size, Opara said, "Yes, they did. We got a copy of the letter and that was why we started reacting." The union, however, failed to produce a copy of the letter for sighting when our correspondent demanded for it.
In the protest letter to the Minister of Power dated April 22, 2013, the union said it considered the directive to the CEOs to submit list of its workers to be right-sized as an effort in futility.
This, according to it, is because the action tends to "jump the gun" in view of ongoing discussions with the Federal Government on the early settlement of terminal benefits arising from the sale of PHCN infrastructure.
Opara said in the letter, "How can we accept a list that tends to separate into two the same set of people that are to be disengaged? We shall hold BPE responsible for misadvising the minister always on these labour issues. The directive to CEOs is an attempt to cheat and short-change our members. We shall resist it vehemently.
"Secondly, we are of the opinion that even the disengagement, if properly executed, can lead to the same objective of rightsizing the workforce. We advise that the plan to right-size should be left to the new investors."
He said after payment of terminal benefits to all employees, it would then be easy to determine which among the lot would be advised to leave, stressing that the government should pay the workers before rightsizing.
