The Federal Government of Nigeria's shift in ground on the impasse between it and workers of the Power Holding Company of Nigeria saw the emergence of an agreement Tuesday night which would see about 50,000 staff and 4,000 unregularised staff paid off as part of the full privatisation of PHCN's assets.
This agreement isn't coming cheap for government: It's costing them over N400 Billion as against the less than N200 Billion which they'd earlier budgeted as severance pay.
Also, the government has agreed that the total accrued gratuity as at June 30, 2012 shall be paid to active PHCN workers in accordance with the defined benefit scheme stipulated in PHCN 2010 conditions of service. This is a major u-turn on the part of government which had agreed that the Pension Reform Act, PRA, 2004, had abolished gratuity.
With the agreement, new workers who will be absorbed by PHCN's new owners will have a new condition of service in line with the agreement of labour reached.
Payment of gratuity had been the crux of the unresolved labour issues that had pitched organised labour against government, stalling the privatisation of PHCN assets and government's reform agenda in the power sector.
Source: www.vanguardngr.com
We should commend the FG for bending over backwards. . . a lot, on this long drawn out issue. They've realized that the back-and-forth posturing is getting us nowhere fast.
Someone had to concede. . . and they were the ones.
We hope that with this imbroglio smoothed out, we can begin to expect some semblance of stability in the power sector come 2013.
At this point it might be wise for us to stop asking the government to account for how the N880 Billion Oil Subsidy funds was spent, even though we know that a minus application still leaves us with a balance. . .
. . . But as long as we can put on our lights at night, power our household appliances and hospitals, and run our SMEs effectively and profitably. . .
. . . We don't really want to know.
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