Privatisation: 'How to Avoid Industrial Crisis'
Economy
By Nnamdi Duru
Comrade Chubby Nwa-gbara,General Secretary of Senior Staff Asso-ciation of Utilities, Statu-tory Corporations and Go-vernment Owned Companies has warned that privatisating any corporation without add-ressing the universally accepted six-step precudure to every successful privatisation programme would end up making the organisation vulnerable to industrial crisis.
The exercise, according to the (SSAUSCGOC) scribe, involves a series of negotiations with workers on issues ranging from severance package to share ownership scheme as well as management buyout option.
He regretted that these issues were disregarded in the ongoing privatisation of government-owned companies.
Nwagbara made this known in his address at the first triennial delegates' conference of the Nitel branch of Senior Staff Association of Utilities, Statutory Corporations and Government Owned Compan-ies (SSAUSCGOC) in Ilorin, Kwara State capital, recently.
He insisted that "an overdose of the opium of privatisation provided by the International Monetary Fund (IMF)" has been administered on Nigerians under the pretexr of the shortcomings of government corporations.
This situation he said, accounted for attempts to sell off Nitel Plc without a thorough valuation of its assets.
Nwagbara then outlined a six-step exercise which he maintained should be a prelude to successful privatisation of government companies as obtains in other developed and developing nations.
The first step, according to him, was engaging workers and their unions in a productive dialogue aimed at communicating the rationale and merit of the exercise, followed by putting in place an employee-ownership scheme, which would ensure that workers in such organisations buy shares of the corporation at reduced prices.
He stated that there after there would be an adoption of management/employee buy-out programme as well as providing severance pay and bonuses to employees likely to voluntarily withdraw their services in the course of the privatisation. When this has been done he said government would volunteer to absorb a proportion of the workers to be displaced in the exercise while incorporating an employee welfare package as part of investors, bidding documents to conclude the negotiation with workers.
Nwagbara also cast aspersions on the successful privatisation of Nitel. "How can Nitel be privatised when these critical issues have not been addressed?" he asked.
"Privatisation of Nitel or any other organisation without giving these issues critical consideration is obviously sitting on a keg of (gunpowder), which might explode any time," he warned..
vEarlier in his address, the Nitel branch President of the association, Comrade Samuel Adigun, urged government to make clarifications on the privatisation position of Nitel as well as measures put in place by government to assist the new management to tackle Private Telecommunication Operators who are in the habit of cutting Nitel cables and dumping calls on its network.
He also wanted government to clarify issues bordering on the fixed wireless licences given PTOs and the relationship between M-Tel and Nitel.
Adigun also called on the management of Nitel to ensure that equal payment of rent subsidies is made to officers of equal status irrespective of their city of posting as a way of checking the disparity in salaries of workers in the organisation.
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