FG should pay our monetisation arrears - SSAUTHRIAI - Wants wrongfully retired workers recalled - Says hospitals' boards have no right to privatise support services

Moshood Oladimeji AkinadeThe National Secretary, Senior Staff Association of Universities, Teaching Hospitals, Research Institutes and Associated Institutions (SSAUTHRIAI), Comrade Moshood Oladimeji Akinade, in this interview with AYO-LAWAL GBENOBA, spoke about the challenges, problems and hopes of the association. Excerpts:

What are the challenges facing your union?
In every organisation, there must be challenges and for any viable organisation or for any dynamic organisation, one has to face challenges as a course. The issue of payment of arrears of monetisationis one of the pending matters with the government. You will recall that during Obasanjo’s administration, what they termed reform policy was adopted and as a result of this, and because of misinterpretation on the part of the management of our members who are mostly in the teaching hospitals, research institutes, national library, colleges of education, polytechnics and colleges of agriculture, a lot of retirements were unjustifiably made. Take for instance, in the teaching hospitals, there was what they regarded as privatisation and commercialisation which is not in the general guidelines for the reform of parastatals. This is the document that was given by the Federal Government through the Bureau of public Service. As a result of misinterpretation, a lot of the teaching and specialist hospitals embarked on what they described as commercialisation and privatisation of support services. These support services include works department; catering, laundry, environmental, security, departments where you have the bulk of the workers in any teaching hospital. We approached this issue from two main angles: (1) We declared trade disputes in accordance with Trade Dispute Act of Cap 432 Law of Federation of Nigeria 1990 and protested to the supervising ministry, which is the Federal Ministry of Health. As a result of this, during the Grange regime, seven zonal committees were set up. They have submitted this report and I remember vividly, in August last year, we pressed for the release of this report but unfortunately, the ministry had not concluded its assignment by then. We have been reminding them and even, our union has forwarded a letter to the new minister of health, intimating him on the outstanding grievances and pending matters with the Ministry of Health, which need to be settled. The issue of monetisation of arrears, as I said, is not peculiar to our members alone.

That letter you said you forwarded, is it for them to release the report?
Yes; for the minister, we only tried to let him have an insight into pending matters between our union and the ministry. We want him to settle down a little bit before we now make a follow-up. Apart from making him know the outstanding grievances of our union, we equally requested for an audience with him, so that he can be properly briefed. But I learnt from a reliable source that even the ministry itself has prepared a sort of document,. itemising all pending issues which needs a clearance from the Honourable Minister, to enable them take appropriate action. So far, these are what I can regard as the challenges. The issue of monetisation, is not peculiar to our union. This is a matter that has been pending since 2006. We wrote so many letters, we declared trade disputes, we threatened industrial action and each time, there was intervention by either the ministry or appropriate committees of the National Assembly. We have impressed it on Mr. president that if provisions were not made for the payment of arrears in 2006, 2007 and 2008, provisions must be made in the 2009 budget. So if government fails to do that, it will mean they want to incur the wrath of the workers.Afterall, workers in the core ministries have collected their monetisation arrears. There will be no excuse for Yar’Adua’s government not to pay these arrears by the end of the first quarter of this year. This is where we stand today and that is our position.

Apart from those mentioned, what other grievances do you have?
Well, there is the demand for the recall of all those that were retired wrongfully as a result of the reform exercise. That issue must also be looked into because the majority of the workers retired were those that were engaged in the support services and the support services in the hospitals , apart from the nurses, form the bulk of the workers. We have also been pressing for the establishment of a National Health Service Commission like the NUC, NCC which have been created for the colleges of education, the polytechnics and universities. But I’m not too sure if it has been signed into law. These are part of what we are demanding for, especially for the hospitalsbwhich are not properly funded, as a result of which we have a lot of infrastructural decay in our hospitals. Apart from that, because of lack of adequate funding for all these hospitals, they have not been made to perform their responsibilities as dictated in the law.At one time, we also sent a letter to Mr. president for the reconstitution of the government boards of these hospitals because we can- not leave the administration in the hands of the chief executives of these hospitals and the ministries. They have a law or statute that establishes them and all these boards of parastatals were dissolved in October 2007. It will be very very unacceptable to us for the president to continue this type of administration.

After all, one of the seven-point agenda of this administration is to follow due process and the due process is strict adherence to the rule of law.So, if these institutions are established by the laws of the land, then it is the duty Mr. president to allow these laws to function.

Is the enactment in the constitution or a special act?
It’s a special act. Teaching hospitals have their own act which is Decree 10 of 1985, promulgated by the Babangida administration. So also is the Decree of 1979 for the establishment of special hospitals like Igbobi at Lagos, the one at Enugu, and all other orthopaedic hospitals in Nigeria.The Federal Medical Centres have no statute of their own but they are using the teaching hospitals' statute to run the affairs of these hospitals.

In the course of these struggles, what are the main challenges you’ve faced?
Well, what we’ll regard as challenges would be the inability of the government to impress upon the ministry to act appropriately. I told you that in 2007, Mrs. Grange, the then minister of health appointed seven zonal committees, based on the geographical zones of the country, including Abuja, that started their work in December 2007. Those that were appointed into the zonal committees were officials of the ministry. After thirteen months, why should the report not be ready?

Sir, is it that they have not done the report or the report is ready and they’ve not released it?
Yes, in August last year when we had a meeting after the declaration of the ultimatum, it was the minister of labour that was supervising the ministry, we were summoned to a meeting on August 5 and it was evidently clear at that meeting that only two zonal committees had submitted their reports.They mandated then that these committees that were firmly in the ministry should go and complete their report. Subsequent meetings were ordered to be held.

What reasons were given for the delay?
The reaon was that they said the reports were not ready as at then and even when we had a meeting, the contention of the ministry was that they wanted to look at the reports and then take a decision before they could release what might be regarded as the white paper. But we shouldn’t forget that human beings were involved, people that had been illegally retired in 2006 which we have been fighting.

It is still there, so they must consider them and expedite action on the matter.This is the position at the moment and it is part of the matter that has been referred to the new minister. Our members are already agitating but we want the minister to settle down a little bit, because if we put too much pressure on him, the excuse he will give when we are invited for a meeting would be that he was just coming into the office and that he needed time to study the situation.This is the way things are done in this country. We will still persuade our members to exercise a little patience.

So how long do you intend to give the minister?
Well, by the end of January, we are going to write a reminder, particularly the aspect requesting for a meeting with him, because he might not be fully conversant with most of the things, the submission to him might not have been to our own taste because the ministry’s position would be quite different from our own position. So, we would want to know, even if the ministry have submitted a position to him, whether the position submitted meets the requirements of the union because, as far as we are concerned, we have examined the reasons adduced by various managements and we have also discovered that in the generic guidelines, there is nothing like privatisation and commercialisation of support services. So, people cannot go outside the law to just throw away innocent workers and then, look at some of the hospitals, look at the buildings for instance in UCH, you now phased out works department, you phased out security department, then you now say you privatise. One, they have exposed the security of that place to outsiders, two, look at the situation in UCH, for instance, the drainage system in UCH, the electric installations in UCH, which are centralised, and unless you have been therefor years, one might not know the positions or locations of some electrical fittings. T he drainages in UCH are underground and there are some places that, if workers that work in that particular environment are not there, and you simply bring an outsider, he will not be able to handle. Commercialisation and privatisation doesn’t mean outright retirement or termination of appiontments of workers in that establishment.

What it means is that we create more avenues of generating funds for the establishment. Ambulance for instance, may be thehambulances they have have not been put for the use of the public, you now say, to rbing in more money, people from outisde that want the services of ambulance in UCH should come and pay for it .

That is commercialisation, not that you now phase out the workers there or you now say that the carpentry workshop or the kitchen department is scrapped, afterall, the kitchen department was established by law.

Which law established the kitchen department?
The law that established the catering department has been on since the emergence of teaching hospitals in Nigeria. One is that the patients that are admitted into hospitals cannot just be given any kind of food and that is why you have that section. The type of food that would be prescribed for a mentally derailed person is quite different from that of those that are in the maternity section. There are different prescription of food for these people.

The dietician will work in the catering department?
Definitely, because without the dietary department the wrong foods would be prescribed. They are the ones to prescribe the type of food, like pharmacists who prescribe drugs.

From what you said, they are still have the dietary department but the catering department has been phasedout, how do the dieticians now carry out theirjobs?
Well, at one time, I learnt that they were buying food from the fast food outlets but the patients rejected them because the type of food they are supposed to be eating is quite different.

Concerning your grievances, has anything been done about any one of them?
Nothing has been done and from the look of things, it appears the government of this country is in the habit of allowing workers to agitate before they do things for the workers. Look at what is happening in the National Assembly, who determines their fate? It is the National Assembly members themselves who determine what they are going to get as entertainment, what they are going to get as touring allowance. It is only during this regime that we talk on constituency allowance for the legislators, is that part of their job? From what I know, all over the world, those who are in the National Assembly, in the parliament, are to make laws, it is the duty of the governor of a state to determine which road to tar,which new road to construct. I think giving constituency allowance to all this legislators is very abnormal, they are supposed to make laws. And you imagine , the Senate in their report for 2008 said they passed only eight laws, what are they telling Nigerians? So when I said that it is the people in government that are pushing the workers to demand, without anybody telling them there should have been a proposal from the president to look at what is happening in the global world now and do something about workers' plight. What excuses do the legislators have to jack up their own pay and allowances and deny the working class?

Did you raise any request over that sir, like paying the minimum wage?
The issue of minimum wage is the responsibility of the labour at thecentre, which has been done. We do not belong to the NLC; we belong to the Trade Union Congress andthere is collaboration between the two, not minding that one is for A and one is for B. Nigeria is not an exception, there are about three labour unions in some other countries of the world, while in some, there is one, two, three or four .

But when there is common objective, all of them come together to achieve that.

Concerning the national Assembly, I want you to elaborate more on it. Some people are saying they should be on part time and not full time so that the money they spend will reduce, what is your own position about this?
In the First Republic we were running a parliamentary system of government t under Balewa, then the military came in and you know, the years the military ruled in this country are triple or ten times of that of the civilian government. It is the military that introduced what they termed the presidential system of government.American is running a presidential system of government but the way they are running it is quite different from ours in this country. I have never read it in any paper, either local or foreign, that members of senate or house or representatives in the US are demanding for constituency allowance and I’ve never seen where members of the national assembly in Britain are demanding for constituency allowance. I’m not saying that the National Assembly should not supervise affairs but people look at their flambouyant lifestyles and feel sad that they are suffering in the midst of plenty. When people get into office, they want to embezzle money beacuse they must have spent a lot during the campaigns. One way we can curb that is to minimize the amount of money spent on elections in this country.You can- not exercise your right and if you must exercise your right you must be paid. The peolple are doing this because once the politicians get to office they forget about the peolpe who voted them in.

So should the national assembly be placed on part-time basis?
Well from the look of things and from the way things are going, I think they should be made part time. We should revert to the old system and we will now see the difference.We cannot be static, if we are practising a system and it's not beneficial to the populace, then it has to be changed. You can imagine a councillor is earning more than a professor in this country, what work are they doing? How many bye-laws have been passed in most of the local governments?I don’t know the councillor in charge of my area in Oluyole Estate I’ve even never seen the chairman and nobody even extended their campaign rally to our area.Even when we voted, it was not what you voted that determined the result. The system has allowed more corruption and everybody is now running after money. part of the problem is the government's emphasis on certificate. That is why you have certificate racketeering, because you say somebody who can do the job, you say he does not have the certificate then someone brings the certificate. Since you want certificate, hebrought the certificate and he cannot do the job, then, people who do not have certificate but can get the job done, you ask them to be teaching those who brought certificate how to do the job, which kind of system is that?

The issue of certificate should be de-emphasised and government and organisations should focus more on in-service-training and other forms of staff development programmes. If all of us go to the university, who will do the cleaning, laundry, and so on?

CDWRN urges FG to accelerate commitment to wage negotiations

Rasheed Komolafe, Lagos

permanent Secretary, Labour and
productivity Ministry, Alhaji Sulaimon
Kassim (right), and HIV Coordinator,
Mr. paul Okwulehie, during an HIV
workshop for ministries and
parastatals, in Abuja, recently.The Chairman, Campaign for Democratic and Workers' Rights in Nigeria (CDWRN) Comrade Rufus Olusesan at a recent media briefing in Lagos urged the Federal Government to show more commitment to minimum wage negotiations with Nigerian workers.

Comrade Rufus said the call becomes imperative because it is only through an early commitment of the Federal Government to the negotiations on workers demand for increase in the minimum wage that the two parties can arrive at a better minimum wage for Nigerian workers in no distant future.

“It is vital that over the course of the next twelve months, the Federal Government negotiates and arrives at a compromise with the labour movement on the N52,200 minimum wage demand and at the same time provide the necessary financial and technological support to enable Nigeria meet the employment opportunity challenge."

“The CDWRN urge the three tiers of government to include an integrated employment concern into their economic and social policy planning in the next 12 months”, he added.

Commenting on the importance of decent work which the three tiers of government have deprived workers in the country since independence, the CDWRN boss said, “CDWRN believes that we can repair and rebuild national economies on the basis of a green new deal, which will create wealth, jobs and protect the environment”.

''Change will be painful and the new economy we all want to build cannot leave people aside. Workers and their organisations have to participate in decision making. Social dialogue is a necessity for effectively tackling decent work and social development. It is a tool and we call on the government to use it to build consensus in Nigeria ”, he added.

He noted that with over nine years into civil rule, Nigeria shows no sign of real progress and Nigerian workers and the poor masses are still deprived of basic democratic workers' rights. Trade union activists, political activists, human rights activists, students and journalists are still faced with regular state and police repressions when standing up for their rights.

TGTSSAN blames FG, smugglers - Comrade Onaghinon, TUC Treasurer

Adetokunbo Kayode,
Labour Minister.The National president, Textile, Garment and Tailoring Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (TGTSSAN), Comrade Yakubu Jerekeri, has attributed the failure of the industry to the non-chalant attitude of the Federal Government and unpatriotic activites of smugglers in the last 10 years.

Jerekeri, who took a swipe at the govern-ment's attitude to the textile industry revival in the last 10 years, said: “The challenges that led to the collapse of not less than 150 textile companies over the past 10 years, apart from poor funding, is that the industry is beset with inadequate supply of infrastructure such as irregular power supply, which has compelled most industry operators to depend mainly on generating sets for electricity supply."

“The high cost of diesel needed to power the generators has, to a large extent, contributed in increasing the cost of local textile products, making imported brands cheaper in price than local equivalents,” he added.

“The Federal Government on June 2006 set up a committee to be chaired by the then finance minister, Mrs Nenadi Usman, to source for N50 billion, and later N70 billion, to rehabilitate the textile industry.

"The two in-house labour unions were not part of the committee and till date, none of the few operating textile industries in the country has confirmed receiving any grant from the committee”, he further said

He said that despite the ban on textile materials into the country, the products still find their way into the Nigerian market through our porous borders and the perpetrators have been selling same at prices far lower than locally made ones, thereby making Nigerian-made textiles very uncompetitive in the market

Jerekeri, however, said: “Some of the Asians who were accused of being behind smuggling of textile products into the country were employers of labour in the past. We must look at the reason why they now find importation more appealing.”

“The smugglers have disregarded government orders banning importation of finished textile products by sneaking them through the borders to Nigeria ”, he added.

On the role of the Nigerian Customs Services and what this portends for the Nigerian economy, the labour leader said, “the Customs is helpless. Everybody is a loser. The country has drifted to a country where no income is generated from textile products because they are smuggled in. The government is simply not working.”

ASSBIFI protests sack of IT Unit president in LASACO

The Association of Senior Staff of Banks, Insurance and Financial Institutions (ASSBIFI), in conjunction with the Trade Union Congress, recently staged a protest to register their displeasure over what they described as the unlawful termination of appointment of Mr. Olusola Fasanmi from LASACO Assurance plc.

Mr. Olusola Fasanmi, who happened to be the Unit president of ASSBIFI in LASACO Assurance, was allegedly accused by a manager of a new generation bank at Oke-Arin, Lagos,on 23rd October, 2008, while he was on his annual leave.

According to a statement by the Senior Assistance Secretary General of the Association, Mr. Friday Inegbedion, the management of LASACO, based on the information from the bank, slammed an indefinite suspension order on Fasanmi, barely a week after the allegation.

The argument of the association was that the suspension, which later led to the termination of Fasanmi’s appointment, was against the rudiments of common law practice and the subsisting industry-wide collective agreement.

According to Inegbedion, the Collective Agreement stipulates that such " matters, real or imaginary, must be referred to and investigated by the Nigeria police, before management can take disciplinary actions."

However, a meeting was scheduled to hold between the management and the leaders of the association over the issue and confirmed by Mrs. Jumoke Koleoso, Head, Corporate Affairs Department of LASACO Assurance.

Meanwhile, LASACO Assurance, during a chat, underscored the need to develop human capital by embarking on an accelerated plan of action. The programme, tagged Accelerated Staff Development, is aimed at developing its manpower for a cutting- edge performance in the industry.

The MD/CEO of LASACO Assurance, Mr. Olusola Ladipo-Ajayi said "it is in line with the overall vision of the company to deploy the best available human capital in the industry. The role of quality manpower towards positioning LASACO Assurance as a world class organisation cannot be underestimated."

The accelerated staff development cuts across the entire gamut of LASACO Assurance operations and it is planned and co-coordinated in such a way that every staff has access to quality training and exposure to current trends in the industry. To also boost staff morale and enhance productivity, there was 100 per cent increase in salary for all the staff last year.

The ASSBIFI helmsman, however, said that several staff have benefited from various training programmes, "which confirms LASACO’s commitment to building a workforce that can compete favorably with their counterparts in the industry. He added, "this huge investment in the staff will definitely have positive impact on the operations of the company. He commended the management on staff empowerment and further urged the company to continue as this is a veritable platform to encourage staff and also a motivating factor towards optimum performance.