No plan to sack government workers, says finance minister

Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed, says there are no plans to sack government workers.

The minister made this statement on Thursday during an interview on NTA’s ‘Good Morning Nigeria’ programme.

During the interview, Ahmed refuted speculations that the government was planning to lay off workers to save funds.

Ahmed further stated that the president has also directed that the minister pay the salaries of government workers.

“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. He has been consistent in those directives and we have followed those directives to the letter,” she said.

Moreso, the minister gave an insight into how the government plans to cut personnel costs.

Ahmed said, “Well, we do hope that at the end of the exercise, some agencies will be merged and it will cut down operational costs. 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 give them 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 and people would exit and go and start their businesses and we would reduce the size of the personnel cost.” (Daily Trust)