Access bank had sacked over 300 of its staff in a singular exercise in Anambra and Abia states, according to information made available to The News Gazette Online by some of the affected staff, Access Bank had towards the end of November, in defiance to the central bank and Bankers Committee directive issued termination letters to over 300 workers mostly contract staff.
in a letter received by the affected staff through their contracting firms the bank had alleged incompetence as being the reason for their disengagement.
In an interview with some of the affected staff, they dismissed the claims by Access Bank as false stating that some of them had served the bank for upwards of 6 to 12 years without a single query in their files, one of those disengaged said he had served the bank for 12 years and was promoted four times, he also stated that in a recent appraisal he was rated ‘A’ as the best staff in his branch and was to be awarded Appraisal bonus by his branch before the disengagement letter came.
They claimed that the reason for their sack was to fulfil the planned lay-off initiated by the bank during the covid-19 lockdown but was stopped by the CBN and Bankers Committee and wondered why Access Bank is going ahead with the planned lay-off at this time without recourse to CBN directive.
A senior management staff of the bank who spoke to us on condition of anonymity told the News Gazette Online that the only reason why they are disengaged was to hire new staff with National Diploma (ND) so as to dodge paying some of them their due entitlements or upgrade their staff status as the bank is trying to cut overhead since the country’s economy is going through recession, he argued that if it was as a result of incompetence as the bank claimed, when did they begin the assessment as most of the staff disengaged were some of our best till date, if the assessment was recent why were women on maternity leave who have not been working for 3 months affected? he queried.
In a data discovered by the News Gazette Online, contract staff represented 43% of total bank staff and they were the most affected of the job cuts in the bank since 2019 as their contract do not provide them with the condition of service enjoyed by permanent staff.
Recall that Access Bank threatened to downsize staff in April, the CBN issued a press release confirming that it had agreed with banks to suspend the sacking of bank staff.
In the press release, the CBN maintained that, “in order to help minimize and mitigate the negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on families and livelihoods, no bank in Nigeria shall retrench or lay-off any staff of any cadre (including full-time and part-time).”
The Apex Bank also insisted that banks are required to first obtain approval from CBN before any staff is laid off in the event that it was absolutely necessary, while the Federal Government warned employers against sacking workers because of the economic slump occasioned by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
But the question now is, did Access Bank get CBN approval to lay off over 300 staff from Abia and Anambra states?
