As the Federal Executive Council (FEC) begins the review of the White Paper on the Presidential Committee on the Rationalisation and Restructuring of Government Agencies and Commissions, the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has vowed to resist any attempt to make workers suffer as a result of the exercise.
In the proposed rationalisation exercise recommended by Steve Oronsayeled committee, no fewer than 220 agencies and commissions were billed to be scrapped.
The committee recommended that some agencies that are having overlapping functions should be scrapped in order to bring down government wage bill. But the NLC yesterday vowed to resist any attempt by the government to workers victims of the exercise.
In a statement issued in Abuja by its President, Abduwahed Omar, NLC said that while government's overriding interest was how much money it could save from this exercise, the Congress would want the government to focus on the enthronement of transparency, competency and other time-honored values of service.
Omar said the government could still achieve functional and dynamic bureaucracy capable of making the country proud without unnecessarily creating labour crisis. He said: "A perfunctory audit will certainly reveal that workers' salaries in these establishments constitute a negligible per cent age of their running costs.
High cost of governance is made inevitable by grossly over bloated contracts, ridiculously high numbers of political appointees whose duties add little or no value to the system, weak internal governance structure and poor accountability.
"In our view therefore, getting rid of corruption and investing in human capital development will help in no small way in realising this objective instead of saving costs as the primary objective.
"Government, we believe, should also note that unlike the private sector, its primary objective is not profit. "It is penchant for adhoc- ism without regard for due process created the situation it has found itself. This exercise avails it the opportunity of redressing this wrong and restoring powers, resources, rhythm and functionality to ministries.
"Similarly, this exercise, the on-going constitutional review and specific efforts at remodelling the Revenue Mobilisation and Allocation Commission all provide the needed opportunity to abrogate the offensive disparity in wages between civil servants and political office holders who in spite of their advantages, always manage to arrange for themselves gratuity and pension when they are not deserving of any.
They eat their cake and have it. "In the end, we shall hold government by its promise that this exercise is not targeted at pushing anybody out of work or in making life difficult for anybody."
National Mirror
Resisting something like won't just come with words alone but action. Let's just see how it'll all pan out at the end of the day.