28,000 Fed Govt workers to be sacked.

The Federal Government is planning
to sack no fewer than 28,000 federal
civil servants to trim the existing high
recurrent expenditure in the yearly
federal budget.
A top government official saddled
with the task disclosed this to The
Nation yesterday. The source said that
the yearly budget can no longer
absorb the staff strength in the public
service.
The official said the exercise, which is
expected to be carried out next year,
would affect only civil servants who
are considered to be unproductive
and who do not add value to service
delivery.
According to the source, who heads
a strategic organ of the federal civil
service, "the structure of the Nigerian
budget can no longer accommodate
the current unwieldy number of civil
servants in government employment
across the nation".
He attributed the difficulty in
operating the federal budget to the
over-bloated recurrent component of
the budget, especially personnel.
Justifying the impending mass sack,
the official added that the demands
by university lecturers, doctors and
the entire civil service have stretched
available resources to a breaking
point.
He pointed out that it was for this
reason the Federal Government was
forced to cut its recurrent budget for
2012 by two per cent; from 74 per
cent to 72 per cent, a cut whic, he
said, has resulted in government
saving about N200 billion.
The source, however, stated that the
government would be extra careful in
the handling of the exercise, saying
that it would come in phases to avoid
possible social and economic
dislocation.
The government, the source said,
does not want thousands of workers
on the streets at a go to avoid having
another civil unrest on its hands. ‘’But
those saying we should cut recurrent
expenditure should not forget that we
have to sack workers," he added.
"Mass sack is inevitable but we will
go into it with a lot of sense and tact.
Workers who are not adding value
will certainly have to go, he added.
Already, a committee headed by a
former Head of Service of the
Federation Mr Steve Oronsanye has
been put in place with a mandate to
trim and reform the federal civil
service. The committee is said to have
started the necessary groundwork on
the exercise.
To guard against a repeat of the
dislocations and endless litigations
thrown up by a similar exercise
carried out by the Obasanjo
administration a few years ago, the
source said government will attempt
to review the existing civil service
laws, which do not allow mass
sacking of workers.
According to him, the laws will be
reviewed so that those affected will
not go to court. "Many of those that
were laid off in that exercise simply
went to court and today they are
back to their jobs," the source added.
Another source in the Office of the
Accountant General of the Federation
(AGF) also confirmed the planned
reduction in the number of civil
servants. The source said: "At present,
there are 78 ministries, departments
and agencies (MDAs) but we expect
another five MDAs by March and by
April this number will rise to 98."
The first step in the mass purge, the
AGF source said, will be the
harmonisation of all the existing MDAs
under the Integrated Payroll and
PersonnelInformation System (IPPIS).
The source, however,identified the
major problem with the IPPIS as that
of connectivity but added that the
office of the AGF has started working
with Galaxy Backbone, another
government agency, to address the
problem.
The source assured that all the MDAs
will be captured on IPPIS by the end
of this year with a significant
reduction in government’s payroll.
The AGF source also explained that
the Pension Task Force put in place
by the Federal Government recovered
about N74 billion, stressing that
further recoveries are being
expected.