THE federal government has approved the payment of the outstanding staff entitlements of N33.4 billion (about $222.6 million) due to the ex-staff of Nigerian Telecommunications Limited (Nitel) and its mobile arm, Mtel. The payments, to be effected in two instalments in March and May 2011, will commence next week.
Bolanle Onagoruwa, director general of the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE), dropped the hint during a meeting with the House of Representatives Committee on Communications.
Onagoruwa said the verification and payment of all Nitel/Mtel staff and pensioners, except the casual staff, was carried out in 14 designated centres across the country last December.
She said N54.4 billion was sourced to settle outstanding staff liabilities which include salary arrears, entitlements to current disengaging Nitel/Mtel staff, allowances payable following court judgment in respect of the staff disengaged by Transcorp in 2006, pensioners and casual workers of the two telecoms outfits.
The National Council on Privatisation (NCP) had at its meeting on June 11, 2010 reactivated the presidential task force on Nitel/Mtel labour restructuring taskforce headed by the minister of labour and productivity to address the issue of outstanding salaries and allowances owed Nitel/M-tel staff. The taskforce was also mandated to determine the numbers of staff to be disengaged to reduce the wage liabilities of government since the enterprises are not operating.
The committee recommended that all employees of Nitel/M-tel be disengaged and immediately re-engage 455 transition staff from the 3,389 staff.
This plan would reduce the monthly wage bill to N115.5 million from the current N695 million. The re-engaged staff will remain till handover to a core investor. The existing security arrangements will also be maintained to secure the assets of the companies.
Onagoruwa added that owing to the poor record keeping of the pre-and-during Transcorp management of Nitel/M-tel, it was impossible to establish the actual debts of Nitel/M-tel. She however stated that in order to attract reasonable bids, the NCP approved to sell the enterprise net of all debts. “The entire debts of Nitel/Mtel were assumed by government and would be warehoused for subsequent settlement from the proceeds realised from the sale,” Onagoruwa said.
She pointed out that in order to determine the total indebtedness of Nitel/Mtel, the BPE advertised and called on all creditors of the two companies to submit their claims. She said that “claims received will be verified and negotiated before settlement at the conclusion of the sale.” She disclosed that over N208 billion claims have been received and that there may be more especially from the plethora of cases pending against the companies.”