The Minister of Finance, Budget, and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed, yesterday, said that the Federal Government has no blueprint to lay off workers in the Federal Public Service.
Speaking on Nigeria Television Authority, NTA’s Good Morning Nigeria Programme, the minister stated that President Muhammadu Buhari had repeatedly said that no worker would be sacked.
Ahmed explained that the FG needs to review the number of its ministry, parastatals, and agencies (MDAs) to reduce personnel costs and have more revenue for capital projects.
She, however, assured that such a review would not result in job losses in the public sector.
‘’Mr. President doesn’t want to disengage staff. That is what he has directed from the beginning of his administration. He also directed that we pay salaries. The Federal Government has never failed in paying salaries and he said we must always pay pensions.
‘’So, he has been consistent in those directives, and we have followed those directives to the letter’’.
While responding to a question on how the FG would cut costs through the review exercise, the Finance Minister said,’’We do hope that at the end of the exercise, some agencies will be merged and it will cut down operational costs.
‘’And also, we will be able to come up with incentive packages to retrain people and redeploy them in some areas where they are useful.
‘’For example, we still have a very high need for teachers, so, we can retrain people and send them to teach but also incentive packages to exit. Again, that is also money. If you want people to exit, you have to pay them”.
‘’That is an incentive package so that they can go. That is why it is taking a lot of time because it is not easy to decide on this.’’
‘’Everything centres on resources . We need resources , and if we had a lot of money, we would just give very beautiful incentive packages’’.