TUC Criticises Sanusi’s call to FG to Sack 50% of civil servants, Scrap LGs

The Trade Union Congress of Nigeria (TUC) on Wednesday criticised the call by Central Bank Governor Sanusi Lamido Sanusi on the Federal Government to sack 50 per cent of its civil servants.
In a presentation at the Annual Capital Market Retreat in Warri, Delta, on Tuesday Sanusi advised the Federal Government to sack half of its work force to maintain a sustainable economy.
Sanusi said Nigeria could not build its economy when 70 per cent of its earning went to salaries and entitlements of civil servants.
TUC president Peter Esele told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja that the Sanusi lacked the capacity to call for the action.
He stressed that a civil servant earned less than a dollar a day while about 170 per cent of the country’s budget was being spent on those in government.
Esele said that the governor should rather, go to the National Assembly and challenge legislators’ spending and not the civil servants.
“ I think that the CBN governor is being economical with the truth. He knows those who are spending Nigeria’s money.
“I know he has been summoned by the National Assembly before because he said that 25 per cent of the overhead cost of the Federal Government budget went to the National Assembly.”
Commenting on the call for the scrapping of the 774 local governments, Esele said the councils did not function properly because the government did not give them powers to perform their statutory functions.
He said that the state governors made the councils redundant by planting those loyal to them in office.
“Why will a local government chairman be loyal to the governor and not to his constituency.
“In other parts of the world, it can’t happen except in Nigeria,’’ he said. (NAN)