Former secretary to Jigawa State Government, Muhammad Inuwa Tahir, has claimed that massive retirement and employment embargo has paralysed the state civil service.
He stated this while presenting a paper titled “Challenges of Human Resources in the Civil Service of Jigawa State: What Needs to Be Done” at a one-day workshop organized by NEXTJigawa.
He said the state civil service has been identified to have suffered undue neglect over the years with most of the experienced and capable officers retired, died, or transferred their service elsewhere.
Tahir said the situation led to serious challenges in terms of adequacy and skill gaps across the state.
He noted that civil servants constitute the heartbeat of an organization, a state, and to a larger extent the nation.
According to him, “The size of the Jigawa State civil service has grown to about 64,000 as of 2014, but due to high rate of attrition resulting from retirements, death or transfer, the size has reduced to about 57,000.
“Civil service in Jigawa State has been experiencing unprecedented challenges to the extent that some MDAs lack officers on directors’ level and even the middle and lower cadres.
“In most cases, officers on principal or chief grades were assigned to hold the position of directors and in some cases, those in the executive grades are assigned to the positions of the officer grades.”
Tahir, however, advised the government to as a matter of urgency, rescue the state civil service through staff evaluation, recruitment of new staff, reintroduction of the special training programme, training funding, mentoring and succession planning, special engagement of retired senior staff, prioritization of funding for graduate employment.
