PHCN Rejects BPE Order For Staff Verification

The Power Holding Company of Nigeria rejected the move by the Bureau of Public Enterprises to implement a staff verification exercise ordered by the Federal Government of Nigeria due to disagreements on the details of the exercise. Therefore, the verification exercise which began on October 20 has been suspended.

The Federal Government ordered that an audit of the workers of the power company should be conducted before the payment of the arrears of some their allowances. However, The PHCN workers, on the other hand, are insisting that only casual workers of the organization should submit to the verification as a prelude to their full absorption into the workforce despite ongoing reforms in the power sector.

The spokesman of the BPE, Mr. Chukwuma Nwokoh, stated that, “there is a disagreement but we don’t want the matter to escalate. We are in dialogue to resolve the disagreement”.

The General Secretary, National Union of Electricity Employees, Mr. Joe Ajero, responded by saying, “We had a meeting with the Federal Government, where it was agreed by those who attended that the exercise should be restricted to the over 10,000 casual workers in a bid to regularize their appointments in line with the extant labour law. But what we discovered later was that the consultant to the BPE, who is handling the exercise, decided to extend the verification to all PHCN workers, which was not part of the agreement.”

It was noted that there are fears among PHCN workers that the verification is part of the Federal Government’s ploy to implement the sacking of the workers