It is high time, the Nigerian Labor congress visited Zenith Bank, to address this kind of untoward personnel management policy. This nonsense must stop. Dr. Chriss Ngege please rise up and be counted as the man who became the game changer for the oppressed casual personnel nation-wide, in Zenith Bank PLC.
Zenith Bank PLC is the third so called new generation bank that, I have had the privilege of opening both a personal and an enterprise account with, yet I am today so ashamed to be discussing the otherwise healthy bank, as one of the banks with the worst human resource policy in its industry; if not the entire corporate Nigeria. Why, you may be asking me now?
Each time I visit any of the bank’s branches for transaction, what I see are two sets of personnel; the privileged number strutting the banking halls with majestic confidence and infectious yet very haughty smiles, and another bunch of personnel with a crest fallen disposition, seemingly disconnected from the merry-go-round, stakeholder-staff. Some of these forsaken lot are the auxiliary personnel, who work in the security department, cleaning or office assisting personnel. Most times they are either drinking soaked ‘garri’ mixed with groundnuts or helping themselves with roasted plantain and groundnut still, because this is what their meager income can afford.
This development really got me thinking, so much that I began since last year to ask many of them what their pay packages were, and also what their employment conditions were. My startling finding is that many of them are classified under what has notoriously been tagged casual labor in Nigeria. Some of these services, though so central to the wellbeing and image of the banking institution (particularly security and good sanitary condition) have since been outsourced to upstart ventures, run by charlatans, hungry and willing to collect peanuts from zenith bank and also pay peanuts to their staff.
And this morning with so much disappointment, I am asking the Minister for labor Dr. Chriss Ngige, a simple question: what are you doing to protect and also stand up for these group of exploited and vulnerable workers? The most touching story was told by a security guard who told me that he has since acquired a first degree and presently doing a masters degree programme, having joined the bank some eight years ago with a just WASC qualification, yet he has remained a security guard, and that all his pleas to the bank’s management to uplift him has been rebuffed. He sadly says he has since given up. The shocker is that he is only one out of a multitude, living with such deprivation, criminal neglect and shame.
It is high time, the Nigerian Labor congress visited Zenith Bank, to address this kind of untoward personnel management policy. This nonsense must stop. Dr. Chriss Ngege please rise up and be counted as the man who became the game changer for the oppressed casual personnel nation-wide, in Zenith Bank PLC.