By GABRIEL ENOGHOLASE

Comrade Didi Adodo is the Edo State Commissioner for Establishment and Special Duties. Before joining the State Executive Council, SEC, of Edo State, he was the General Secretary of the Iron and Steel Senior Staff Association of Nigeria, ISSSAN.

In this interview, Comrade Adodo spoke on the efforts of Comrade Adams Oshiomhole to rebuild the state civil service, employment of youths, training and re-training of workers, among other issues. Excerpts:

There are growing concerns by members of the Youth Employment Scheme, YES, over their status and non-promotion.

Above that, they are afraid of what will become of them after the Comrade Governor leaves office. What assurance can you give them?

The Youth Employment Scheme was a way we employed 10,000 youths. They could just fit into the civil service structure as at that time and we needed to take them off the streets.

They were employed through the Rapid Response Agency, RRA. It was supposed to be a collaboration at that time through the local governments but the local governments were being controlled by the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, as at that time so they did not co-operate but Governor Oshiomhole went ahead to employ the youths.

No government can come in and sack them except the government wants to scrap the law establishing the agencies responsible for their employment. Their positions are guaranteed.

The issue of promotion as you find in the regular civil service is being addressed. I have raised the issue with the governor and with the new Head of Service, we are sure of doing something for them. There are two options, either we allow them float like that or bring them into the civil service.

Governor Oshiomhole promised that all backlog of promotions should be cleared before the end of 2013 but the 2012 promotion is still pending. What is the problem?

I don’t know what you mean by still pending. We have been able to play our own part. The Civil Service Commission, CSC, was not yet constituted when the governor made the promise.

The promotions are to be done by the commission. Everything is moving smoothly now. A lot of promotions are with the Commission and very soon, they will be cleared.

What plans for capacity building of workers?

We have organized several trainings in the last three months, both within the state and outside. We have in-house training and it is a continuous exercise. We are seriously not lacking in training but there will be improvement.

The morale of Edo workers is not low. We are doing promotions; settled relativity, pay minimum wage and other issues have been taken care of. We have said teachers have to go for training and re-training.

The workers are fairly okay.
There were issues that arose from that. Somebody goes for training without approval; approval comes after the person has gone. What we discovered is that when the person applied, the salary stops and it takes over one year for the approval to come.

There is a gulf in the Edo Civil Service as many workers are aging without recruiting new ones to replace them. There are no clerical staff. What is being done to address this?

Few days ago, there was a meeting between our ministry and the Head of Service to look at the issue of aging. When we presented our paper we said the civil service is depleting like the ozone layer. We have recognized that and it is actually aging fast. Even if you are to recruit graduates, you are to do that on level eight.

At some point, we discovered that there may be nobody to appoint as permanent secretary. Before new recruits would get to the level 10, most of the older staff would have left. As a labour leader in those days, we always frowned at government recruiting somebody from outside to head those already inside.

We need to discuss with labour leaders that we may resort to that approach because there are some ministries without level 12 or level 14 officers.

We need to employ across board. We are making sure we balance the civil service in a way that will please everybody.

But where we can get people from within, we do not intend to bring somebody from outside. We have discovered that the next Head of Service might be a level 10 officer. It does not speak well. We are working to make sure the service is okay.

You once fought against casualisation of workers alongside the Comrade governor but there are casual workers in Edo State today. Why are you encouraging casualisation that you once harassed employees for?

This government is not encouraging casualisation. When we came on board, I was Commissioner for Lands and Survey. When we were fighting against casualisation, we never looked at the civil service.

We never knew there were casuals even in the civil service. We were looking at companies that were employing casuals. It was sort of a cultural shock for me when I was made commissioner and a lot of people in my office were casuals.

We found out that there were criminal retrenchments done by two previous governments. The retrenchments were done in a crooked manner.

They removed cleaners, drivers and all kinds of people. Later they discovered that they needed people to drive and clean offices. That became a problem for us. The governor was shocked when I told him about the casuals.

When we were to do employment, the priority was to give employment to the casuals but the employment was not seriously done. The two options left were to send them home or be paying them as before.

If we sack them, they will cry that we have sacked. If we decided to keep them, they will say Oshiomhole is keeping casuals.

Head or tail, we were not winning. It was better to leave them while we look for a way out for them. A lot of these casuals were those already retired. They came back when youths are looking for jobs. That is the matter we are still resolving.

They have to be brought on board. The other option was to send them away. I was on the committee on casualisation. Some workers used to fight us that we want to stop the little money they were earning.

To be concluded.