Ndume Canvasses Part Time Status For Lawmakers Over COVID-19 As Aborisade Flays Call To Slash FG Workers Salaries

Former Senate majority leader, Mohammed Ali Ndume, has canvassed the immediate adoption of part time legislative status for National Assembly members, insisting that all overhead costs and salaries of public servants with the exception of low salary earners be slashed.

Ndume said, “As far as I’m concerned, we can make the National Assembly a part time arrangement for now since we conduct our sittings once or twice weekly these days. If we make it part time, our salaries must be reduced.

“The reality is that we can’t continue in a situation where 70 per cent of the country’s budget goes to personnel and recurrent expenditure as if everything is okay.”

He explained that his call was also informed by the fact that the country was borrowing to fund the budget and it would not be wise to be spending the money to pay for services not rendered.

Ndume, however, argued that the reduction of salaries should exempt low salary earners in the civil service saying, “I didn’t say salaries of civil servants who are struggling to survive should be slashed.

“In this critical circumstance where 70 per cent of the budget goes to recurrent expenditure and overhead, the government should critically look at this suggestion.”

He also charged the Federal Government to identify public officers who could work part time and accept salary reduction.

“For example, even we in the National Assembly, for the period of the pandemic, I strongly advocate that the work of the legislature and other people should be made part time and therefore, pay them on part time basis to reduce cost, he added.

But in a swift reaction, Ibadan-based labour activist and human rights lawyer, Femi Aborisade, lampooned Ndume for advocating reduction of salaries of Federal Government workers who were not able to go to work during the coronavirus pandemic.

In a statement in Ibadan yesterday, Aborisade said, “Ndume’s suggestion that salaries of civil servants should be reduced on account of their inability to go to work during the lockdown is informed by the lawmaker’s ignorance of the law.

“In law, for as long as the employment relationship has not been determined strictly in accordance with the terms of the contract of employment, the employer has a duty to continue to pay workers who are willing to work, but are under obligation to obey government-imposed restrictions.

“For people who are ignorant of the law like Senator Ndume, public sector employment relationship, with a few exceptions, have constitutional and statutory flavour and are deemed to subsist until retirement age.”

Aborisade explained that the status quo must remain unless determined by strict observance of the predetermined prescribed procedure and grounds pursuant to statutory provisions or public service regulations made pursuant to the constitution