News: Sack Fever Grips Bank Workers - ASSBIFI

Association of Senior Staff of Banks, Insurance and Financial Institutions (ASSBIFI) - The fall in the value of the naira, may soon start taking its toll on the banking sector as lenders may axe jobs to cut costs, especially on pay cheques.

Already, some workers in the banks have started looking inwards, exploring what they described as option B should the unexpected happens.

Some of them said economic realities are negatively affecting the bottom line of the lenders, fearing that their jobs were on the line.

Confirming this development, President, Association of Senior Staff of Banks, Insurance and Financial Institutions (ASSBIFI), Mr Olusoji Salako, said banks would  look at what they could do to reduce their expenses, adding that job loss would be one of the first steps. He pledged to ensure that the banks follow due process in laying-off their workers and paying them off.

He said: "You know in Nigeria, we don't have good temperament for economic summersault. If somebody invests and things are not working fine, the next thing is to remove people working with him. In other climes, people will persevere but here in Nigeria, people don't persevere when it comes to such issue.
 
"We are, however, bracing and also monitoring the employers to ensure that if become necessary to lay off their workers, due process must be followed and people affected must be well compensated so that they can function in any part of the economy."

He said though the economy has witnessed interventions by the government apart from the austerity measure, the common man on the street is feeling the pain ýbecause nothing is really working now.

He said: "The government is just trying to make money to pay salaries and nothing is left for any infrastructural development or any other intervention in the critical sectors of the economy. This is as a result of fall in the oil price.

"The question would be that when we have the price of oil rising in the couple of years back, what did we do with the excess money we made?

"We just squandered the money and you know anything that goes up must come down. If we have been managing our resources prudently, it is likely we would not have experienced this kind of problem. All we need to do is deep our hands in the excess crude account and use that as an intervention measure to augment what we have.

"Now, we are faced with the reality now that things will not be as easier as before and to worsen the situation every effort of government is to make the rich richer and the poor people poorer because if you have few dollars, you become richer in naira wise and the average who wants to anything will use foreign currency and will pay more."

Source: The Nation