By Abubakar Yunusa
Staff of the Department of Weights and Measures in the Federal Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment on Wednesday stormed the headquarters of the Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission (ICRC), in Abuja to protest a planned concession of the department by the Federal Government.
The aggrieved workers said the move could render hundreds of staff jobless and redundant if allowed to proceed.
Carrying their grievances to the ICRC office, the protesters demanded clarity from government authorities, insisting that workers had not been properly briefed on the proposed concession.
“We have over 800 staff whose jobs are at stake,” a representative of the Chairman of the Joint Negotiating Council in the ministry, Alimi Olarenju Hamid, said during the protest.
Hamid argued that the Department of Weights and Measures was created through an Act of Parliament and could not simply be concessioned without legislative action.
“If, for any reason whatsoever, the department is to be concessioned, it must be referred to the National Assembly to proscribe the Act,” he said.
He warned that workers were worried about the possible consequences of the policy.
“If the department is concessioned, the possibility of them losing their jobs is very, very certain, and this is what we are trying to avert,” Hamid added.
Addressing the protesters, an official of the ICRC, Yusuf Haruna, urged the workers to channel their grievances to the leadership of their ministry rather than the commission.
Haruna explained that the ICRC only receives and reviews projects forwarded by ministries and agencies of government.
“The first place you should be is with your ministry — with your Permanent Secretary and everybody. Understand what the project is about. There are no redundancies. Nobody will lose his job,” he said.
According to him, the Federal Government was considering concession arrangements because of funding constraints.
“Government is struggling to fund projects. When people come in, they bring resources and extra value. They want to take the department to a level it is not yet,” Haruna said.
He insisted that documents before the commission did not indicate any job losses.
“For the issue of losing your jobs, these are issues we can address. From the documents we’ve seen, there are no job losses,” he said.
But the protesting workers maintained that they were yet to receive official briefing from their ministry.
Vice Chairman of the Association of Senior Civil Servants of Nigeria, FMITI unit, Mirian Nduruka, said workers were not opposed to government policies but demanded transparency.
“We cannot obstruct any good policy from the government. But we need to understand what they have for us,” she said.
“Up to this moment, we have not been briefed by the management. The staff are just aloof. We don’t know what is happening.
“That is why we are here for clarity,” Nduruka added.
