ASCSN Kicks Against Civil Servants Salary Reduction

Group Managing Director, C&I Leasing Plc, Mr Emeka Ndu (left), exchanging pleasantries with the Company Chairman, Air Vice Marshall, A. D. Bello, at the 2014 Annual Report presentation of the company, in Port Harcourt, yesterday.

The Association of Senior
Civil Servants of Nigeria (ASCSN) has kicked against any attempt to slash the monthly salary of civil servants throughout the federation.
The ASCSN President, Comrade Bobboi Bala Kaigama and the Secretary General, Comrade Alade Bashir Lawal, in a joint statement issued on Wednesday explained that it is criminal for anybody to contemplate cutting down the salaries of civil servants who are already underpaid in the country.
They said any attempt by the new government to reduce the salaries of workers will be viewed as an invitation for showdown with organised labour in the country.
The union leaders advised the Federal Government to ignore the unsolicited advice in some quarters calling for cut in civil servants salary  as part of measures to reduce cost of governance.
They explained that many states owe civil servants bulk of monthly salaries and other rightful entitlements and yet the workers are expected to come to work without transportation, feed their families s,tay healthy, pay children’s school fee and house rent.
The labour leaders further explained that civil servants pay has lost its value since the last increment done in 2010, stressing that the subsidy removal, devaluation of the naira and the high rate of infrastructural decay has continued to rob innocent civil servants the value of their salary despite being paid peanuts.
The union leaders added that what is being contemplated as pay cut for political officeholders cannot be extended to civil servants because government cannot compare the two pay structures.
They called on the Federal Government to be cautious as there is no basis to compare National Assembly members with civil servants, stressing that while political office holders can make do with 75 per cent reduction in their emolument, a one per cent cut in the salary of civil servants will just end up sending some civil servants to untimely death through unwarranted hardships and miseries.
They urged the federal government to live up to expectations on its promises