As expected, the ongoing implementation of the reforms has generated resistance and protest in some quarters. Recently a group of aged women took to the streets of Amassoma, Southern Ijaw, Bayelsa State to protest their removal from the payroll of NDU.
The women, who were in their late 60s and early 70s, blocked the road leading the university in their area demanding their names to be returned to the payroll. The aggrieved women obstructed traffic and even carried a mock coffin as they lay on the road refusing to give way to vehicular movement.
The women were casualties of the reforms and were reportedly removed for drawing salaries despite reaching their retirement age. But Iworiso-Markson, observed that the protesters were mainly aged people, who could not understand that civil service has age limitation.
He said the detractors of the government were funding the protest instead of explaining to the mothers that the government was doing the right thing. The commissioner said the protesters would rather thank the governor if they understood that the public reforms were meant to secure the future and provide opportunities for their jobless children.
The commissioner said the protesters were among the over-bloated non-academic staff weighing down the university adding that the school had a ratio of 70 percent non-academic staff to 30 per cent academic staff.
He said the affected women were not going to work but were drawing salaries at the end of the month. He said to ameliorate the effects of removing the retired persons from the payroll, the government decided to pay them three-month salaries in lieu of their disengagements.
He said: “The protest is being supported and sponsored by the enemies of the state. Instead of explaining to the women that they had gone beyond the age of retirement and should leave the system as required by the law, these enemies made it look as if the government was set to punish the women.
“But we are engaging them and we know that very soon the women will come to realise that there is age limitation in the civil service. They will soon know that at a certain age a civil servant is expected to leave the system to create spaces for fresh graduates.
“These graduates are the sons and daughters of these women. They roam the streets without jobs because the system has been weighed down by illegalities.
“But the governor has decided to do the right thing. He has done what others could not do by ensuring a vibrant, productive and efficient public sector. The governor needs commendation. He needs to be encouraged to complete the reform because at the end these protesters will be the ultimate beneficiaries.”
The governor also insisted that blackmailers would not arm-twist him and his government to abandon the ongoing public sector reforms in the state. He said the reforms were borne out of his love for the state and his desire to clean the mess in the civil service.
“Blackmail cannot stop me”, he said but noted that the government would look into all genuine complains and address legitimate grievances arising from the reform.
“I won’t accept further fraud against this state”, he declared blaming opposition to the reforms on persons, who institutionalised the fraudulent system and made it look like their rights.
“We must work together to reposition it. We cannot be known as a state with ineffective civil service because what has happened in this state cannot happen in other states”, he said.
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