Minister of Finance refutes rumours to sack gov’t workers
Story from Aisha AUYO, Abuja
Nigeria’s Minister of Finance, Budget, and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed, has refuted rumours that the Federal Government is planning to sack workers in order to save funds.
Ahmed said this on NTA’s ‘Good Morning Nigeria show on Thursday, which was monitored by Neptune Prime.
READ ALSO: PMB sacks AEDC management over workers’ strike
The Minister said President Muhammadu Buhari had said repeatedly that no worker would be sacked.
She, however, said the government would encourage people to leave government jobs by giving them incentives.
Ahmed said the government would reduce overheads by ensuring that government agencies are merged.
She added, “Mr President doesn’t want to disengage staff. That is what he has directed from the beginning of his administration. He also directed that we pay salaries. The Federal Government has never failed in paying salaries and he said we must always pay pensions.
“So, he has been consistent in those directives and we have followed those directives to the letter.”
When asked how the government would cut personnel costs, Ahmed said, “Well, we do hope that at the end of the exercise, some agencies will be merged and it will cut down operational costs.
“And also we will be able to come up with incentive packages to retrain people and redeploy them in some areas where they are useful. For example, we still have a very high need for teachers so we can retrain people and send them to teach but also incentive packages to exit. Again, that is also money. If you want people to exit you have to pay them.
“That is an incentive package so that they can go. That is why it is taking a lot of time because it is not easy to decide on this. Everything centres on resources. We need resources and if we had a lot of money, we would just give very beautiful incentive packages and people would exit and go and start their businesses and we would reduce the size of the personnel cost.”
Follow the Neptune Prime channel on WhatsApp: https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029Va74ZvU2v1IqKByXoX3d
Do you have breaking news, interview request, opinion, suggestion, or want your event covered? Email us at neptuneprime2233@gmail.com
