NASU decries rising unemployment saga, urges review of TSA

THE first six months of the Muhammadu Buhari administration has not done anything concrete to generate employment, the General Secretary of the Non-Academic Staff of University and Associated Institutions (NASU), Peters Adeyemi has said.

Speaking in Abuja, Adeyemi also said the stance of the President to prioritize saving costs rather than putting the necessary funds into the economy to generate economic activities may do more harm to the economy than good.

He said: “In the first six months, there has been no attempt at creating any jobs at all. If care is not taken, the All Progressive Congress (APC) government at the federal level may be contradicting the party’s manifestos by the things it is currently doing. What we are witnessing today is the collapsed of the ministries because government said it wants to safe costs. Except this is managed in a magnificent manner, they may create more problems. How can the ministries be collapsed and create jobs at the same time? Saving costs must be done in such a manner that able-bodied people are not thrown into the unemployment market.”

While calling for the modification of the Treasury Single Account (TSA), Adeyemi said though the step has its merits, TSA must be implemented to avoid increasing the population of jobless Nigerians.

“It is obvious that the TSA has put all the banks in trouble. And due to that trouble, banks are gradually disengaging quietly. This again is a clear deviation from the intention of the government to create massive jobs every year. The biggest crisis that confronts us today as a people is unemployment. If the APC manifesto said the party will generate two million jobs annually and six months into a four-year tenure, no single job has been created, rather job are lost, how can the government achieve that aim? Also side by side with this is also the problem of the downturn in the economy. I think clearly that some of those things that this government has set out to achieve may be affected adversely by the current happenings in the economy. There is no doubt that government must begin to take practical steps towards delivering on those things they promised to do. When they start, that level of high hope Nigerians put in this government will be rekindled but now Nigerians are not too confident in the ability of this government to deliver.”

The NASU Scribe stressed that the appointment of Ministers would necessitate a review of some of the stopgap action taken so far by the President.
He added: “I believe that some of the steps taken so far would be revisited very soon now that the Ministers have been appointed. I also believe that TSA was introduced to check the recklessness of the past governments. For me, TSA is not a policy that can be permanent in the way it is without any modification will breed crisis even for governance. There are a lot of institutions that they now have to pay all the money they generated into government accounts.
This has been a problem because those establishments no longer have the fund sot run their affairs. We must understand that it is not all government agencies that are given subventions. Some are supposed to generate money to complement subvention that comes from government especially in the education sector.