Herbert Wigwe, the group managing director of Access Bank, has announced the the bank’s planned mass job cuts and pay cuts.
A report by Bloomberg indicated that the salary cut is expected to start from May unless business conditions improve
The bank boss who spoke via video conferencing in a town hall meeting with the bank’s staff said those to be affected by the mass retrenchment are outsourced staff who are offering “non-essential services.”
“We probably don’t need as many securitymen as required, even to the fact that we are not gonna have all our branches open between now and December. We don’t need all the tea girls. We don’t need all the cleaners. We don’t need all the tellers etcetera, etcetera,” Mr. Wigwe said in a video on Thursday, April 30, 2020.
“The second has to do with our professional cost. Now that is one that is very tricky and it is tricky because I do understand and appreciate that its gonna, you know, bring its own pain to staff. We basically have to make the adjustments the same way you sounded when we spoke 10 days ago with respect to basically cutting down cost.
“I will be the first to take the hit and I’m gonna take the largest pay cut, which would be as much as 40 percent. The rest we would have to cascade right through the institution. Everybody may have to make some adjustments of some sort.”
Mr. Herbert Wigwe, one of the principal conveners of CA-COVID, a coalition of Nigeria’s private sector against COVID-19 said the proposed measures are aimed at keeping the bank afloat in the face of the economic realities of COVID-19.
CA-COVID which is led by Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, is credited to have raised about N30 billion, feeding up to 1.7 million Nigerian, ordered 400,000 coronavirus test kits, and building isolation centres worth over N500 million isolation.
President Muhammadu Buhari had placed a one-month partial lock-down in Lagos, Abuja, and Ogun States; measure that was intended to check the spread of the coronavirus.
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look at what these people are saying…quite unfortunate of them to donate a billion to please FG only to come back to lay off workers, It doesn’t seem more like wisdom in doing that. FG doesn’t even regard much your donation as much as your workers put in their time and energy for the effectiveness of your bank operations, and here you’re telling us a script that’s not readable. Las Las any bank that lays off workers in this time is a big time fraud.