Union urges El Rufai to train teachers instead of sacking them

Governor of Kaduna State, Nasir El-Rufai, has been urged by the National Union of Textile, Garment and Tailoring to retrain the over 21,000 teachers he planned to sack for failing a competency test.

The union said that the workers’ deficiency was not a crime, noting that Nigerian leaders equally needed to be subjected to competency tests to determine their tenure in office.

General Secretary of the organisation, Issa Aremu, said this during the commemoration of Africa Industrialisation Day in Abuja on Friday.

He stated that workers must be partisan, adding that the payment of salaries and other social parameters should henceforth be used to determine the tenure of governors.

He said, “To be deficient for a worker is not a crime, but every employer must know that you need to train and retrain workers. He who comes into equity must come with clean hands. The real competency must start from the President to other leaders.

“Workers must be political and partisan; any governor who does not observe workers’ rights does not deserve our votes. In fact, any governor that fails to pay workers’ salaries should be recalled. Governors should be held accountable and their re-election should be determined by how they treat workers.”

Speaking on African industrialisation, Aremu noted that African countries must digitalise their economies, stressing that workers needed education and skills to compete in the current economy.

Resident Representative of Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung Nigeria, Ulrich Thum, who also spoke at the event, stressed the need for workers to look ahead and have a long-term plan.

Source: ( Punch Newspaper )