Abagworo: Labour

By VICTOR AHIUMA-YOUNG

ORGANISED labour in the Financial Sector, has said the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, Governor, Mallam Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, will remain in the bad book of labour in a long time to for initiating and implementing policies that have continued to kill jobs and impoverish workers in the banking industry.

Under the umbrella of Association of Senior Staff of Banks, Insurance and Financial Institutions, ASSBIFI, affiliated to the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC. it lamented that in the last one year CBN’s unstable policies in the sector put financial sector workers under severe threat of job insecurity in 2012.

Speaking through its General Secretary, Obukese  Orere, the group said three Banks: BankPHB, Spring Bank and AfriBank were nationalized under AMCON within the year.


*Orere
According to him: “In 2012, Small Banks were politically made to take over big banks: – Oceanic Bank taken over by EcoBank, Intercontinental Bank taken over by Access Bank. The above actions as a fall out of the CBN direct policy on the sector, seriously affected not only the economy but the workers in these banks who were laid off prematurely and without adequate compensation. The smaller Banks that took over the bigger ones have not been able to cope with the job load as the software and others are not compatible.

Example is EcoBank that has not been able to accommodate the depositors of Oceanic Bank till now. The failure of CBN misguided attempts to impoverished Nigerians by the introduction of N5,000 notes and coins, was another mad policy.

“Cash-less or cash-lite policy was another of the policy summersault for 2012 by the CBN. It said the policy initially was for Lagos only and the sum allowable for co-operate bodies and individuals have been changed. This is due to financial policy instability. It showed that Nigeria has grown beyond trial by error policies.  As at December 2012, the workers in AfriBank were still protesting the non-payment of their entitlements on the streets of Lagos after months of disengagement on CBN policy.

The constitutional autonomy of the CBN is healthy but the individual Governor’s abuse of that autonomy must be looked into by the National Assembly.

“On the constitutional provision, all three tiers of Government – Federal, State and Local share huge sums every quarter. One may be forced to ask what each of these tiers has done with their share in the interest of the poor.

In all, the financial policies by the CBN on the sector in 2012 have left financial sector workers and Nigerians poorer. From the point of view of our union, we can confirm that all Banks in Nigeria and most of other financial institutions retrenched workers in great magnitude within the year. Therefore, the financial sector workers were the worst off in 2012. No thanks to the policy summersault of the CBN.”



http://www.vanguardngr.com/2013/02/sanusi-policies-killing-jobs-impoverishing-workers-laments-assbifi/