Kaduna workers to begin industrial action May 17 over retrenchment

Etim Ekpimah

Workers in Kaduna State are to embark on a five-day industrial action across the state on May 17.

The Alliance on Surviving COVID-19 and Beyond (ASCAB) says it fully supports the call by the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) for a five-day strike across Kaduna State in the week beginning May 17.

The group which has called on all its affiliates to support the strike, added that determined effort is needed to reverse the massive attacks on jobs and poverty-induced insecurity in Kaduna State.

The Interim National Chair, ASCAB, Femi Falana, SAN, said the economy of Kaduna was traditionally built around textile factories and the public sector.

He added that in the decade before the current governor came to power, the last four major textile factories were closed with many of the workers not receiving any terminal benefits (despite two of the factories being mainly owned by the governments of the Northern states).

Falana who asked the workers to support the strike in Kaduna from 17th May, urged Nigerians to ‘say no to retrenchment,’ noting that retrenchments breed insecurity.

In the statement he made available to journalists on Sunday, May 16, Falana noted that the governor, Nasir El-Rufai rather than address the economic decline, has retrenched perhaps 60,000 public sector workers and many have not received their due payments.

“Kaduna State is now a dangerous state in Nigeria to live, work or visit in terms of the regularity of bloodshed, kidnappings and killings by bandits and ethnoreligious inspired violence.

“The level of insecurity in Kaduna State today is a function of unprecedented, cruel anti-workers policy of the Kaduna State Government including repeated mass layoffs.  The uncontrolled insecurity is therefore the ’harvest’ or product of the state’s anti-labour policies.

“In 2016, over 13,000 workers considered to be ghost workers, were dismissed. The following year another 40,000 public sector workers were retrenched. Around half of these were teachers. The state arbitrarily pegged the pass mark for their competency test at an unprecedented 75 percent.  Many of these teachers did not receive any redundancy money.

“From April of this year, the State Government has been dismissing perhaps as many as another 17,000 workers.  This includes 6,000 local government and primary health care workers who have all received their marching orders.  The remaining 11,000 workers from the state ministries have been listed for dismissal on account of having spent 30 years and above in service and/or being on level 14 and above,” Falana said in the statement.

He added that pensioners who have earned pensions for between 5 and 10 years and have ‘refused to die’ are no longer being paid.

The legal luminary stated that the state government maintains that their children should take care of them. He said the governor claimed that the policies are necessary due to declining revenues, but they are far from the truth.

“The state has plenty of money – ‘borrows’ from workers. Kaduna State Government has significantly increased its internally generated revenue (IGR) over the last five years.

“IGR has increased by about 16% a year in real terms (after considering inflation). So, IGR is now about half the total income of the state even though the monthly FAAC allocations are now increasing again as crude oil prices have recovered from the Covid-19 dip.

“In fact, actual spending on wages and salaries in 2019 (the last available audited accounts) was about a third the level that was spent on capital.

“In addition, the monies owed in salaries, pensions etc grew massively in 2019.  At the end of the year, 40% of the state debt was borrowed from workers’ wages.  Similarly, N132 bn of the N152 bn capital spent by the state during 2019 was borrowed from wages! That is nearly 90% of capital spending by the state was financed from unpaid salaries, pensions etc.

“The State may be borrowing from China, the World Bank etc to fund urban renewal, but the state is also illegally ‘borrowing’ from its workers to fund almost all of its capital expenditure.  They are then rewarded with repeated waves of retrenchments. The mass retrenchments and ‘borrowings’ from wages have almost certainly had a detrimental effect on security in the state.

“It cannot be a coincidence that the state with the highest level of sackings also has one of the worst insecurity records.  Loss of income and livelihoods makes people desperate.  Several reports previously demonstrated the direct link between loss of textile employment and a rise in criminality and drug-taking.

“A modern state needs satisfied workers. A modern state can only be built by a well-motivated workforce.  Decent health and education services can only be provided by nurses and teachers who have confidence in the Government, know they will be paid at the end of the month, are not living in fear of losing their jobs and believe that they will receive their pensions when due as they retire.

“Governor El-Rufai seems to have fully accepted the ethos of Neoliberalism. The State Government believes the rich and businesspeople must be handsomely rewarded and incentivised to ‘invest’ in the state.  In contrast, the workers must be paid the lowest possible salaries, beaten into submission, and periodically terrorised by mass sackings.

“ASCAB supports the strike action to stop retrenchments. ASCAB believes that the strike action is necessary to force Governor El-Rufai to stop his policy of retrenchments and job losses.  We welcome the work that the trade unions have undertaken to embark on the strike action.

“We call on all trade unionists in Kaduna to ensure the success of the strike actions. ASCAB calls on all our supporters, all trade unions, and unionists across Nigeria to support the strike action in Kaduna State. We contend that halting job losses would be a major contribution to reducing insecurity across the state,” the statement read.