FG orders sack of 20,000 PHCN workers

THE Federal Government has ordered the retrenchment of no fewer than 20,000 workers of the Power Holding Company of Nigeria, PHCN, ahead of takeover by successful bidders of its assets.

Vanguard gathered that the Bureau for Public Enterprises, BPE, issued the directive to the Chief Executive Officers, CEOs, of the 18 successor companies to PHCN at a meeting in Abuja, to compile names and drastically reduce the 50,000 strong workforce before the new investors take over.

It was gathered that new investors demanded that the workforce must be pruned before government hands off.

Labour  kicks, warns on danger of action

Though it is not clear how government arrived at this figure, however, General Secretary of the National Union of Electricity Employees, NUEE, Mr Joe Ajaero, who confirmed the directive to massively retrench the workforce, said it was obvious that the Federal Government had decided to truncate the implementation of the collective agreement reached with the unions.

Already, organised labour had kicked against the move and warned the government against such action even as the agreement reached between both parties in December 2012 on the terminal benefits of workers had not been implemented.