JONATHAN STOPS PLAN TO SACK CIVIL SERVANTS

JONATHAN STOPS PLAN TO SACK CIVIL SERVANTS

President Goodluck Jonathan has directed the Implementation Committee on the White Paper on the Restructuring and Rationalisation of Agencies, Parastatals and Commissions to ensure that no federal civil servant loses his or her job in the process of delivering on their assignment.

Head of Service of the Federation ( HoSF), Alhaji Bukar Goni Aji, stated this in an interview with New Telegraph on Sunday in Abuja. President Jonathan had in August 2011 inaugurated a Presidential Committee on the Restructuring and Rationalisation of Federal Government Parastatals,
Commissions and Agencies chaired by a former HoSF, Mr. Stephen Oronsaye, to review pre-vious efforts at restructuring federal parastatals, the mandates of existing agencies and parastatals and make appropriate recommendations to eliminate overlaps, duplications, redundancies and advise on ways to reduce the cost of governance.

Following the completion of its assignment and the gazetting of a White Paper in March this year, Jonathan set up an implementation committee to handle the report.

Aji, who spoke on Monday, said the White Paper implementation committee had started work with the National Poverty Eradication Programme in focus.

As contained in the approved White Paper, NAPEP was recommended for merger.

The HoSF explained that considering the high level of unemployment rate in the country, Jonathan gave the committee a clear directive that no worker should be sacked in the process.

“The President has already given a directive that nobody should lose his or her job in the process. So, no single officer of NAPEP will lose his or her job.

We are trying to relocate them to other ministries. “We will post all of them but we will do this after verification to ensure that the staff were correctly employed, the grade levels indicated in the names are correct while we get their biometrics.

Then, we will redeploy them to ministries and agencies of government while the assets and liabilities will be taken over by the committee also for distribution to the managers for use.”

The HoSF noted that in redeploying the staff, they will not be sent to just only one agency, but would be spread to also check the issue of staff redundancy. “We are working on the others but many of them have laws and Acts establishing them.

So, we have to approach the National Assembly to repeal those Acts, amend them so that their budget can take place,” he added.

He noted that “the President’s position is that he doesn’t want anybody to lose his or her job. We have a very high rate of unemployment so government does not want to add up to it.

That is the idea of reducing the cost of governance.

The second thing is that there are agency duplications; with the implementation of this White Paper, those duplications will disappear. So, few agencies will focus on few areas to make monitoring and evaluation easier.

Those agencies will be made to be result-oriented and deliver services as expected by Nigerians.”

The Implementation Committee of the White Paper has the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Anyim Pius, as its chairman while the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Mohammed Adoke, is to serve as Vice Chairman.

Other members are the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation; Ministers of Aviation, Education, Finance, Health, Industry, Trade and Investment; Science and Technology; Tourism, Culture and National Orientation; Chairman, Federal Civil Service Com-mission; and the Director General, Bureau of Public Service Reforms – Secretary.

The Federal Government believes that apart from reducing the cost of governance, the reform would ensure that parastatals, commissions and agencies are performing optimally and delivering effective and efficient services to Nigerians, in line with the President’s Transformation Agenda.

Meanwhile, Goni Aji has also called for the decentralisation of government offices currently located within the Federal Secretariat complex in Abuja to other satellite areas.

This, according to him, will also bring about speedy development of satellite towns in the nation’s capital and reduce the threats associated with the present security challenges in the country.

He told our correspondent that government was already looking at relocating some federal offices away from the complex, which houses several ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs).

“Definitely, government is looking into that.

There was a time I had discussions with the minister of the Federal Capital Territory. I belong to the group of Nigerians which holds the view that we should decentralise some of the government offices.

“If I should give you examples, the Federal Ministry of Works can comfortably, for instance, be located to Sheda to develop that place. The Federal Ministry of Agriculture can be somewhere in Gwagwalada because it is about agriculture.

It should be closer to farms even though they are managing policies and policy direction. The Federal Ministry of Education can be located somewhere else other than the Federal Secretariat complex.

“Gradually, if any office would come asking for land to develop their permanent accommodation in Abuja, what the FCT minister told me is that he would give them plots in satellite areas.

We should have a programme between now and the next 15 years, so that any new office that is to be constructed should be located in the satellite areas and then after sometime, you begin to relocate the ones that are in the city.

“In the long run, government will surely do that but because of the paucity of funds, it cannot be done in one year.” With the several bomb explosions that have hit the nation’s capital, there have been threats to attack the Federal Secretariat complex which houses many MDAs.