- Food, beverage and tobacco companies set to lay off staff
By Debo Popoola
The recent forex policy by the Central Bank of Nigeria will cause massive loss of jobs, the organised labour union have decried.
Recently, The Central Bank announced that it will not provide foreign exchange for some imported products that can be sourced locally in order to strengthen the naira.
However, the policy seems not to be in favour of food, beverages and tobacco companies as they are struggling to get forex to import their raw materials.
According to a report by Vanguard, Leaders of Food, Beverage and Tobacco Senior Staff Association, FOBTOB, have asked the government to reverse the policy to save the industry and over three million jobs.
President of FOBTOB, Quadri Olaleye, claimed that employers in the sector had devised every opportunity to sack workers, decrying that between the 2012 and the first half of 2015, over 3,000 workers were sacked on the guise of re-engineering, restructuring, right sizing, downsizing, redundancy, re-organisation, etc.
He lamented that over the years, the same excuse of difficult business terrain, dwindling profit, irregular and insufficient power supply, and so on had been given.
He said: “The current situation has reached a pathetic level, because it seems all the employers in our sector are in competition with each other on who can lay off the most workers.
“Every company is now calling for a downsizing of the workforce, and this time under the guise of lack of foreign exchange due to the federal government’s recent policy on foreign exchange.
“We are aware that not all the raw materials used in our industry can be sourced locally. Where they can be found, they are mostly not available in commercial quantity.
“That is why it is imperative that the federal government, through the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, takes a second look at the policy on foreign exchange again to avoid shutting down the companies in our industry.” Olaleye insisted that the union was disturbed that workers in the sector were gradually being turned to endangered species.”
