Unfair practices in banks worry Labour

By Victor Ahiuma-Young
THE umbrella body for senior staff in the nation’s financial sector, the Association of Senior Staff of Banks, Insurance and Financial Institutions (ASSBIFI), has raised alarm over increasing retrenchments and unfair labour practices in the banking sector and warned against making workers scapegoats in the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) induced clean-up exercise in the sector.

ASSBIFI in a communique at the end of a three-day workshop in Lome, Togo, on “Global economic meltdown and options for sustainable industrial harmony,” urged government and all relevant bodies to  vigorously pursue the banking reforms to  revamp the economy, prioritise the real sector, and provision of basic infrastructure as a means to eliminating mass poverty, unemployment, illiteracy and diseases in the country.

The communique issued by Comrades Sunday Salako and Jarvish Erhomosele, Acting President and Secretary-General, respectively, said:

“The Association is alarmed that financial institutions and companies threatened by the rampaging economic crisis have increased the trend of taking adaptational steps detrimental to workers’ interests and long term goals of re-engineering the national economy such as staff rationalisation,casualisation of workforce, refusal to offer credit facilities for viable medium scale industries, manufacture, agriculture, etc that can develop the real sector of the economy.

“Government at all tiers are urged to intensify efforts to provide basic infrastructure like electric power supply, good transportation network which will have spiral effect on the economy because without developed infrastructure there cannot be meaningful development.”