*pays graduate workers N15,000
Civil servants in Imo State have cried out against the disruption of the civil service system by Governor Rochas Okorocha, accusing him of reckless retirement and casualisation of workers through his ‘Youths Must Work Programme’.
Following acute hardship resulting from youth unemployment and austere economic policy, which resulted to scathing criticisms against the governor, Okorocha launched the Youths-must-work programme few months ago where he promised to provide thousands of jobs to jobless youths.
In order to give the impression that the promised job would be real, the governor started retirement of workers who have served up to 25 years and replacing them with graduates who are placed on N15,000 or N20,000 salary.
This came two years after he sacked 10,000 workers genuinely employed by the previous administration.
Speaking in confidence to 247ureports.com, some of the civil servants accused Governor Okorocha of wrongly retiring public officers who had not served up to the mandatory 35 years nor were they up to the 60 years retirement age and replacing them with cronies.
According to them, the governor had even ignored the resolutions of the state House of Assembly urging him to cause the reinstatement of such ill-treated officers, who had petitioned the legislature.
The workers regretted that the governor was surreptitiously casualising the public service through his Youths-Must-Work programme under which public servants could be hired and paid below the statutory salary grade level, and fired at will since they were not duly employed by any of the statutory bodies charged with such duties.
One of them wondered why the Imo State Civil Service Commission should not be allowed to carry out its statutory functions which include to advertise vacancies, recruit, post, promote, discipline and retire civil servants accordingly.
A senior official in the state ministry of education told 247ureports.com that there were currently vacancies in both primary and secondary schools across the state, but the State Universal Education Management Board(SUBEB) and Secondary Education Management Board(SEMB), whose statutory functions are to advertise vacancies, recruit, redeploy, promote and discipline the teaching staff, have been sidelined by the governor who had now handed such functions to Youths-must-work programme.
A teacher in one of the government primary schools in the state also frowned at a situation where, for instance, an NCE holder employed under Youths-must-work programme was paid N20,000 whereas he should not earn less than N50,000 per month and at the same time, lacked job security.
With the ongoing casualisation of workers in the state, there are fears that more workers would be laid off from the civil service soon.
