Labour union rejects sack of 1,050 civil servants

The Association of Senior Civil Servants of Nigeria (ASCSN) has rejected a plan by the Federal Government to sack 1,050 civil servants in its employ on the ground that they are in the service illegally.

The union said the excuse by the government might be a smokescreen to sack innocent civil servants who have served the nation meritoriously for decades.

The union’s GeneralSecretary,Comrade Alade Bashir Lawal, said in a statement in Lagos yesterday that no retirement in whatever form should take place until all stakeholders including the Association of Senior Civil Servants of Nigeria (ASCSN) verify the claim of the government.

He said: “We want to make it abundantly clear that if the government embarks on such anti-labour exercise without allowing trade unions to establish the authenticity of its claim, we will not be able to guarantee industrial peace and harmony in the entire civil service”. The Head of the Civil Service of the Federation (HCSF), Alhaji Bukar Aji, had on Monday at the 60th anniversary of the Nigeria Public Service Commission, disclosed that 1,050 civil servants working illegally in the service would be retired in the next three weeks.

But the scribe of the ASCSN contended that if government’s decision was not a ploy to retire innocent civil servants, it should have no difficulty in setting up a government/Labour panel to fish out the purported illegal civil servants.