By Ade Jacobs
Ahead of today’s meeting between Access Bank Plc and the representatives of the over 2000 workers sacked from its employ recently, the bank has said everything will be done to resolve the labour issue amicably.
The bank explained that the affected workers were not directly under its employ.
The spokesman of the bank, Abdul Imoyo, told 365Daily that the intervention was purely on humanitarian grounds, considering the prevailing economic situation in the country.
“The workers were not employed by Access Bank and they were not the bank’s direct staff. They worked in Access Bank but they were not employed by the bank.
“The decision to sack them was taken by the contracting companies, not Access Bank. But we have intervened, and there are discussions around it.
“It’s not a major Access Bank issue. The workers protest in front of Access Bank to get attention because the contracting companies are not known. Access bank has intervened on the matter, on compassionate grounds because this is a difficult time in the country,” he said.
The bank had, last week, scheduled a meeting with the angry workers who protested at its Victoria Island head office, against alleged termination of their contracts and non-payment of their entitlements.
The workers, who carried placards, some of which read, ‘Stop Access Bank brutality, more than 2,000 sacked’, ‘Access, pay us our entitlements’, ‘What does the future hold for support staff?’, ‘Stop enslaving Nigerians in their country,’ said the termination of their appointments was in flagrant violation of the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN directive.
The apex bank’s Governor, Godwin Emefiele, earlier in June, reached an agreement with chief executive officers and managing directors of commercial banks in the country not to sack workers, after rumours spread in the sector that banks were planning to lay off workers as one of the fallouts of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In spite of this, the sacked workers said, Access Bank still went ahead to terminate the contracts of over 2000 employees, without paying their entitlements.
Punch reported that one of the protesters, Akintayo Akinyemi, said that the bank agreed to meet with the workers on December 11 to iron out their grievances, adding that the bank should ensure that their severance entitlement were paid after serving the bank for many years.
He said, “The bank already scheduled a meeting with our union for December 11. They shifted the meeting to that time because of what they planned to do.
“We want them to pay our entitlements; they should pay us off so that we can do something with our lives. I’m in my mid-thirties and I have been applying for jobs since then, but they have been turning me down because of my age. I cannot get a valid job anymore. I have put about 10 years into the system and I was laid off just like that.”
On his part, Solomon Oropo alleged that the bank’s outsourcing firms paid the workers N11,500 for terminating their appointments, adding that the sacked workers received salaries until November 30 “when we received letters that our services were no longer needed and after that, they paid us N11,500 for terminating the contracts. So, what they’re paying as gratuity is N11,500 and that was what led to this protest.