Group petitions minister over NiMet workers’ welfare

In a letter signed by the association’s Secretary General, Abdul Rasaq Saidu, and made available to journalists on Sunday, ANAP alleged that in the past years, various director-generals and chief executive officers of NiMet had violated the Public Service Rules through irregular employment, promotion of junior workers above their seniors, and indiscriminate filling of vacant positions from outside the agency without internal and external advertisements of such vacant positions as required by law. ANAP said the activities carried out on the basis of demographic representation or political sentiments had placed existing serving career members of staff in NiMet at a disadvantage. The association said, “A lot of long serving meteorologists were cheated in 2005 when the then CEO and his management team carried out an employment exercise for fresh meteorologists to G1.08 with first degree to complement the workforce of the agency at that time. But to the surprise of everyone, they placed some of their candidates with same first degree as others on G1.09, that is a grade level higher without any justification. “The exercise done 12 years ago was to position the meteorologists for leadership over their colleagues. Such a step was a dangerous trend, which became an order of the day in MiMet. Subsequent DGs and CEOs and other management used this as an opportunity for them to also position their own in leadership positions in the agency regardless of the provisions of the Public Service Rules of the Federal Republic of Nigeria as it concerns promotion and employment.” ANAP stated that to correct the rot in the agency, it had written a letter dated July 27, 2017 to the Director-General of NiMet, Prof. Abubakar Mashi. According to the association, the letter which was acknowledged on July 31, 2017, was meant to create a platform whereby it would meet with the DG, NiMet management and other stakeholders to discuss the issues.]]>