The Minister of Labour and Employment, Dr. Chris Ngige seems to have succeeded in his bid to stop commercial banks from massively sacking workers in the face of economic crisis in Nigeria.
Dr. Chris Ngige
The Nigerian Bankers’ Committee at their 327th meeting in Abuja on Thursday has finally agreed to halt the spate of recent mass sack in the industry, the Nigerian Tribune reports.
They were also briefed by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) that framework for the much awaited flexible exchange rate would be released very soon.
In addition, representatives of the bankers and CBN who briefed reporters at the end of the meeting equally disclosed that modality for the establishment of National Collateral Registry has been completed by the apex bank and it will soon be published.
Those who briefed the press included Mrs. Tokunbo Martins, CBN Director of Banking Supervision; Bola Adesola, Managing Director of Standard Chartered Bank; Philip Odozua, Managing Director of UBA; Emeka Emuwa who is Managing Director of Union Bank and Isaac Okoroafor, acting Director of Communications of the CBN.
According to Adesola, “obviously, banks understand the implication of people not being in employment especially with what the situation is like in the country. And we are looking at ways we will ensure that we minimise exits from institutions.
“There will always be exits. People will exit the institutions. As a matter of fact, it is something we have discussed in the past with the CBN Governor prevailing on the banks to minimise any exits from the institutions.
“We have noted the market sentiments and am sure that going forward, it will be different but as I said, we must recognise also that there would be reasons why people would leave and it is not just in the banking industry- telecoms and other sectors have had this type of situation before but it is something that we would manage.”