Bureau borrows to pay NITEL workers

In order to pay the staff of the Nigeria Telecommunications Limited (NITEL) their 18 months’ salary arrears, the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) said it has borrowed N3 billion from the NITEL Pension Fund in liquidation.

The bureau, however, stated that only five months salary arrears which the federal government owes the workers will be paid.

In a telephone interview, the spokeperson of the privatisation body, Chigbo Anichebe, said, “the N3 billion approved by the National Council on Privatisation (NCP) was borrowed from the accounts of NITEL Pension Fund in liquidation.”

But a press statement the BPE issued revealed that Vice President Goodluck Jonathan, who chairs the National Privatisation Council, approved the N3 billion based on the rent/sale collected from major NITEL properties.

Asked who will pay the workers’ outstanding 13 months salary, Mr. Anichebe said “Government is paying for the five months they owe them after they took over NITEL from Transcorp. The 13 or 12 months arrears Transcorp owes them would be paid from the money we get on the bid of NITEL and M-TEL.

“It is important for us to pay them their five months salary now. One month salary would be paid into their account before the end of this week while two months’ salary would be paid before Christmas. And the last two months salary would be paid next month January, 2010,” Mr. Anichebe added.

Crime against humanity

Samuel Adenekan, a staff of the telecoms company, said that the information is not news to them as they were told last month that the BPE was to pay them a week ago.

“BPE announced that they were going to pay us last month when the Director-General, Christopher Anyanwu, visited the union in Port Harcourt. Since then we have been waiting for them to pay us,” Mr. Adenekan said.

“BPE has not been nice to us; they are purposely delaying the sale of NITEL because they want to share NITEL amongst themselves. The government is withholding our money; many staff have died because of lack of fund and that is a crime against humanity to make people work without allowances,” he added.

Deadline extended

Meanwhile, the privatisation council has again extended the timeline for the sale of NITEL for the fourth time as the new deadline for submission of financial and technical bids is now January 22, 2010.

“The deadline was extended because we have to take due diligence in handling the bid,” said Mr. Anichebe.

“Now that we are sure of payment we can now draw the actual time-table for bidding process. Without due diligence there would be no transaction.

“The due diligence process would start next week, whereby the investors can go around inspecting the NITEL project. Although, I don’t think any new investor would be willing to submit an expression of interest (EOI) now as the due diligence process starts next week,” he added.

The bidding process of NITEL started in July and six months after, the bureau has failed to sell off NITEL and its mobile arm M-TEL.

The 14 core-investors that have submitted their expressions of interest include; Etisalat Nigeria (EMTS); Omen International Limited (BVI); MTI Consortium; Finetek.Com/Ericsson Consortium; Globacom Ltd; MTN Nigeria Communications Limited; Telefonica Consortium; Brymedia (W.A) Limited; Conau Limited; Summit Group; MTNL Limited, India; Anas Network Services Limited; Metro PCS Communications Inc. and Galaxy Backbone Plc.