February 7, 2024

– By Reporter

The Governor of Enugu State, Peter Mbah, has reversed the sack of 20 staff of the Enugu State Water Corporation which was announced last week.

The workers were said to have been disengaged by the governor’s special personal assistant on water and waste management, Andreas Gebauer, an Austrian.

However, an ensuing public outcry that greeted the sack and the eventual death of one of the affected workers are said to have caused the government to reverse the decision.

The affected workers were sacked following their alleged inability to meet the minimum N50 million monthly internally generated revenue target from the water supply.

One of the victims, who’s the director of the corporation, Christopher Abonyi, was reported to have died out of shock two days after the reported sack, a development that led to public outcry and protests by the workers.

While addressing the protesting workers of the corporation, the Chairman of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) Fabian Nwigbo, and his Trade Union Congress (TUC) counterpart, Ben Asogwa, told them that Governor Mbah had ordered the reinstatement of all those disengaged.

“On interaction with the governor, we found out that the sack was not his directive. He was not even aware of the sack and he directed that everybody should go back to their work. The governor said everybody should maintain peace and tranquillity and improve productivity,” Asogwa said.

Reacting to the development, the state commissioner for water resources, Felix Nnamani said Gebauer’s sack action was not officially communicated to him and only heard about it in the media.

Nnamani said: “There are civil service regulations, there is the Head of Service who is the administration head of all the civil servants and if any civil servant is found wanting, there are procedures that should be taken before extreme measures; so the unilateral sack of the workers is unknown to the ethics of civil service.

“I urge workers to calm down, it’s regrettable that one of them died two days after he was dismissed and I say condolences to his family, but I’m confident that the governor will do the needful because he is here to build people and not to destroy and he detests injustice.”

Also speaking, the spokesman of the corporation, Romanus Ugwu, said the protesting staff have all gone back to their duty posts while awaiting a formal letter withdrawing the purported sack of the 20 workers.