Governor Peter Mbah of Enugu State has reversed last week’s sack of 20 staff of the Enugu State Water Corporation.
The workers were disengaged by the governor’s special personal assistant on water and waste management, Andreas Gebauer, an Austrian.
The Nation reports that, the reversal followed the public outcry that greeted the sack and the eventual death of one of the affected workers.
The impacted employees were let go because it was purported that they couldn’t meet the N50 million monthly target for internally generated revenue from the water supply.
Employee protests and public outcry followed the news that Christopher Abonyi, a corporation director and one of the victims, had passed away from shock two days after the alleged sack.
However, Fabian Nwigbo, the chairman of the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, and Ben Asogwa, the trade union congressman, addressed the protesting workers of the corporation and informed them that Governor Mbah had ordered the reinstatement of the disengaged workers.
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Asogwa said: “On interaction with the governor, we found out that the sack was not the governor’s directive, he was not even aware of the sack and he directed that everybody should go back to their work. The governor said everybody should maintain peace and tranquillity and improve productivity.”
Reacting to the development, the state commissioner for water resources, Felix Nnamani said Gebauer’s sack action was not officially communicated to him and only heard about it in the media.
Nnamani said: “There are civil service regulations, there is the Head of Service who is the administration head of all the civil servants and if any civil servant is found wanting, there are procedures that should be taken before extreme measures; so the unilateral sack of the workers is unknown to the ethics of civil service.
“I urge workers to calm down, it’s regrettable that one of them died two days after he was dismissed and I say condolences to his family, but I’m confident that the governor will do the needful because he is here to build people and not to destroy and he detests injustice.”
The public relations officer of the corporation, Romanus Ugwu said the protesting staff have all gone back to duties while awaiting a formal letter withdrawing the purported sack of the 20 workers.
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