NEMA ex-director seeks special salary for emergency workers

A former Deputy Director, Planning, Research and Forecasting of the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), Iyiola Akande, has advocated special salary scale and insurance for emergency workers in Nigeria.

Akande stated this in Akure on the sidelines of NEMA’s 2019 annual staff retreat on restructuring and re-engineering for effective and efficient disaster management.

He said the nature of work of any emergency worker respects no time or weather, demanding that, “special welfare package and comprehensive insurance should be provided for staff of NEMA, especially because of the nature of their job that does not respect the time of day.

“I think they deserve some incentive in terms of special salary package, I know it will encourage them to achieve more.”

Speaking on the retreat, Akande said he was happy it had been resuscitated and now cuts across all staff of the agency, adding, “it was restricted to management cadre staff in the past.”

Head of NEMA, Ekiti Operations Office, Olusegun Afolayan, had earlier in his welcome address, and appreciated the Director-General, Mustapha Maihaja, for approving the retreat.

Afolayan noted that NEMA under Maihaja was undergoing restructuring and re-engineering to align with globally-accepted standard procedures to carry out humanitarian activities.

He said the retreat would look into different challenges such as national disaster management framework, natural contingency plan, natural disaster response plan, search and rescue evaluation, among others.