Staff of the Broadcasting Corporation of Oyo State, BCOS, have appealed to Governor Seyi Makinde to save their souls over what they described as senseless, unproductive and highly demoralising recruitment of the Corporation’s retirees as contract staff.
According to them, it has been a new normal for the current BCOS leadership to recruit those who retired from the corporation, especially high-ranking officers, level 15 and above, and those at the management cadre, as contract officers with Jumbo pay and indirectly still occupying their last positions before retirement.
The current outcry results from the reported recruitment of BCOS’s immediate former director of the news and current affairs department. Also recruited as contract staff are the former director of commercial services and another high-level retired officer in the account department. All recruitments in quick succession with mouthwatering allowances. This has further plunged the Corporation into an additional financial crisis.
A source who spoke on condition of anonymity disclosed that the recruitment of retirees, mainly former directors and high-ranking cadres, is questionable and suspected of being laced with favouritism and undue compensation for loyalty to the corporation’s current Chairman. ” It is an attempt by the clique and cabal to milk the pot dry and empty the vessel without considering the financial state of the corporation.”
‘The patronage of retiree recruitment’ is believed to demoralise other staff members who yearn for career progression.
It’s been rumoured that the current chairman‘s leadership style has resulted in the mass resignation of close to 40 staff, of whom the majority are competent hands. Recently, the station’s Director of Engineering was believed to have resigned “out of frustration.”
Despite the mass resignations, the BCOS leadership has had to regularly pay the remaining staff’s salaries, allowances, and wages.
Sometimes workers are owed months of salary arrears.
The financial crisis bedevilling the corporation has got so bad in recent times that, in an attempt to offset salary arrears, the BCOS leadership, as alleged, hurriedly arranged with their proxy and business partner to sell several items of the corporation at giveaway prices without due process, public auction, fairness, and government approval.
An eyewitness told our correspondent that the corporation’s valuables were sold under the guise of labelling them as scraps. According to the eyewitness, trucks were seen moving items (unused and usable metals/ iron ) out of BCOS for almost one week.
Some of the staff are calling for a thorough investigation. Some quarters view it as highly fraudulent, with allegations of receiving kickbacks from the businessman who bought the items.
Some of the staff who spoke to Ireport on condition of anonymity attributed the tragedies that have recently bedeviled the corporation, such as death, ailment, and some staff collapsing while on duty, to the inability to get their pay regularly, poor welfare package, and the “I don’t care” attitude of the current leadership of the BCOS.
In fact, some staff told us that they now work as labourers in a slave camp under a draconian and inhumane DICTATORSHIP.
Our boss wouldn’t visit the sick worker in the hospital, no issuance of condolences or visit to bereaved families of those workers that died during her rule, no welfare package, no respect for our well-being, health and sanctity of workers’ lives, nothing. Highly insensitive and inhumane,” said a source.
It is being said that the organised labour unions within the corporation remain inactive, non-proactive and insensitive to their members’ plights due to BCOS leadership coercion, subtle intimidation of the Excos of the unions.
Feelers from the BCOS indicate that the staff’s frustration is nearing an intolerable level and breaking point, with the possibility of industrial disharmony and a breakdown of civility.
It’s been said in hushed tones amongst the BCOS staff within the Corporation and on social media communication groups that the aggrieved staff are ready to fight for their rights, correct the anomalies, expose suspected frauds, and expose incompetence within the BCOS.
A preliminary investigation by ireport247news revealed that the aggrieved but determined BCOS staff had resolved to take bold actions. Ranging from the issuance of publications/ Open Letter to state their plights and expose the mess the once vibrant BCOS has now turned to:
Writing petitions to the anti-graft agencies in Nigeria and Oyo state for a thorough probe of the Corporation’s finances under the current leadership:Â Staging a peaceful protest to the Oyo State governor, Engr. Seyi Makinde: Call for the reversal of unproductive, senseless, limited resources sapping and detrimental recruitment, recently, of retirees as contract staff: Save Our Souls. Messages to the Nigerian security forces, Civil Service Commission, National Human Rights Commission, National Unions of NUJ, RATTAWU and Transparency International TI, amongst other plans.
The BCOS has recently been in the news with lingering issues that have not been resolved.