Fresh facts have emerged that the ongoing recruitment of fresh hands into the service of the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) without first of all sacking the aging workers was one of the reformist strategy of the managing director, Hadiza Bala Usman.
Known as ‘Succession Plan,’ Business Hilights investigations revealed that the plan was in her inaugural speech. Hadiza Usman had on assumption of duties hinted that more hands will be injected in manner that will allow oil staff to drill them before letting them go having served the nation for a good number of years.
A credible source in the Authority confided in our correspondent that “The strategy of the managing director is partly to ensure that incoming staff are not left in the dark on resumption”.
“The plan is designed in a way that will allow both the new staff to learn from the old staff for easy transfer of skills and you know, learning from your senior in the work place, allow you to understand the system faster and at a cheap or no cost on the agency in the first place.
Continuing, the source said “It is believed that at a time, the Authority felt that majority of the incoming staff have clearly understood the job, having been following their older staff, the aging staff will be eased out seamlessly while work is not hampered. We think that idea is good as it will save training cost for the agency and deepen skill acquisition without tears.
It would be recalled that NPA recently commenced the recruitment of new staff. The recruitment is the first in the organization in the last 15 years.
Usman had ordered the Human Resources unit to immediately commence the process of recruiting some professional technical staff to kick off the mass recruitment process.
The source disclosed further that those to be employed are some junior staff including pilot trainees, marine trainees, signal men and trainee seamen. Some senior staff of Grade Level 8 and above including radio officers, marine officers, marine engineers and harbour managers will also be employed to beef up the operations department.
Besides, a clear face of the emerging recruitment was made public during a tour of Delta Ports, Warri recently, when the NPA boss assured her staff that none of them would be retrenched, rather more hands would come in.
Business Hilights also gathered that part of the tasks already handed down to the General Manager, Human Resources, include to bring up ideas on succession plan in the organization in a way and manner that skills will not be lost, rather there will be internal skills transfer before any plan for retrenchment.
It would also be recalled that among the first steps taken by Hadiza Usman towards a reawakened workforce within few weeks of assumption of duties was the promotion of staff and redeployments which raised productivity and added more life to the daily activities of staff.
