Staff Casualisation In Nigeria

The attitude of employers to their casual  staff
has assumed a worrisome magnitude  in Nigeria. Originally, causalisation of staff  is practice whereby people are temporarily employed for a short period of time to save cost.
In Nigeria, causualisation of staff has almost taken over every sphere of corporate life and has even penetrated the government sector.
Employees mostly in the private sector  are employed  as casual  staff for as long as ten to twenty years, denying them of the entitlements worth the years of their services.
Under normal circumstances, one who has worked for five years ought not to be termed a casual staff, but in Nigeria, the reverse is the case.
Most of them are underpaid, intimidated  and victimized. They  face the threat  of dismissal on a daily basis, which makes them do their jobs with fear, trembling in the process. The fear of losing the one at hand grips them, knowing that getting a  replacement will pose some challenges.
Unemployment and poverty have so impoverished the people that they die in silence. Should  they talk of better  conditions of service and pay,  even the little they are managing with, could be taken  away from them.
They are virtually given every kind of work to do, except managerial roles. They do all the  menial jobs and even do overtime without an extra payment. In fact, “they work like elephants and eat like ants.”
The amount of money they are  paid  is so meagre that they can hardly save to  start any business of their own, they keep mute and continue collecting peanuts for survival.
Another very disturbing factor, is the hazards associated with the jobs, especially the drilling and oil exploration workers, who do their jobs off-shore, right in the middle of the ocean.
Some of them get serious injuries that result in the amputation of parts  of their bodies,  some even go blind  and  lame.
After sustaining such injuries, some are sent home under  the guise of retrenchment  with a peanut package, thus destroying  their future for nothing.
It is so saddening to discover that when foreigners come with their normal pay packages , fellow  Nigerians  who are close to management will obstruct the package, make bargain  with them and pay the workers peanuts  to  take the rest. They will advise  the foreigners not to spoil the youths.
These greedy Nigerians will bring in workers who had agreed to share every month’s salary  with them 50-50. Some of them demand full month  before they bring in these men  to them. At other  times,  these  monies  are paid,  but  the job seekers are not given the said jobs.
Some of them are cajoled into membership of one occultic  society or the other before they could be  given the job. They will even want to have a share of some compensations paid to the deceased staff should they  manage to pay  and even swindle  family members by not giving them benefits that accrue to them.
Rather than paying these staff well, they will quote huge  sums of money for the meals of these workers, take the contracts, given them whatever and take huge chunks of the monies home.
The way these people are treated is so unfair that they could be  considered  modernized  slaves. They are maltreated, frustrated and plundered. Their  values  as humans  is being  trampled underfeet as men could be hired and fired at will.
They are used and dumped at random. They seem to have lost their God-given freedom of expression.
These men who have so risked  their lives  to work under sun or rain should be made permanent staff and be paid their due entitlements.  No man is more human  than the  other. Like the saying  goes, “what is good for the goose is also good for the gander”.
Employers of Labour  should make their staff feel that they too are humans  and not less. Workers  should be paid well. Infact, government should scrap the casual staff status.
The job seekers should not only look out for paid jobs but also think  of other means of making money,  while they wait for an opportunity for a good job.
Ikiensikiama is an intern with The Tide.

Iyeneomi Mercy Ikiensikiama