FG Clears Extra 1,669 PHCN Workers for Severance Payments

By Chineme Okafor in Abuja


The federal government yesterday said it was about to clear  an additional 1,669 former workers of defunct Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) for payment of their severance entitlements and pension, following its privatisation of successor generation and distribution companies of the PHCN in November 2013.

The Minister of Power, Prof. Chinedu Nebo, said in Abuja that the reports that a significant number of the former PHCN workers had not been paid their severance entitlements were not true.

Nebo, in reacting to the recent protest by the workers of the defunct electricity utility of non-payment of their severance packages, said: “I don’t understand where that allegation is coming from because if you recall when the privatisation process started, the Bureau of Public Enterprise (BPE) had a projected list of about 47,000 workers. Of that 47,000, over 45,000 were validated and paid both their severance packages and their PFA.”

He further said through his Chief of Staff, Prof. Chidi Onyia, that the number of those yet to be paid was about 2,400 and that: “Out of that number, 1,669 has just been validated based on a committee constituted by the BPE with some members of labour and some members of the ministry, including people from the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN).”

He added that the names of the validated workers would be published next week for them to come and present their information for clearance and subsequent payments.

The minister also spoke about the fate of the about 800 other workers that are yet to be validated, saying: “The others are those that even PHCN and the people that are suppose to submit the list; labour has not given us the list. We do not want to validate people that are not in the system and are ghost workers.”

The list, Nebo said included workers in the Enugu Distribution Company (Disco) whose data crashed during last year’s validation exercise. The verification of the 1,669 ex-workers, it is understand, will be done across nine centres in the country between January 26 and February 6.

Nebo, however, did not disclose how much was was owed to the workers but said: “We can’t say how much will be paid, I will have to get the exact amount from BPE. But once a validation is through and the list is submitted to the Office of the Accountant General, funds are released right away.”

He also dismissed the notion that the moves to clear the workers were being made in the face of the general election saying: “I had said that this list for 1,669 former workers came up from several processes. The demonstration just happened two days back, so we couldn’t have gone to the zonal offices, validated the list and about to publish it just in 48 hours.”

 http://www.thisdaylive.com/articles/fg-clears-extra-1-669-phcn-workers-for-severance-payments/199813/