FOLLOWING some confusion regarding the sacked 300 street sweepers’ supervisors in Lagos State, Standard Street Manpower Ltd (SSML), the employment contractor, on Tuesday shed more light on the issue.

The Head, Human Resources and Administration, SSML, Mr Oluwatoyin Ayoola, said in a statement that the sack was following the decision of the Lagos State Ministry of the Environment to take over the management of the street sweepers.

Ayoola said that SSML had to transfer the workforce to the ministry.

He said that whilst the transfer of the street sweepers had been concluded, the fate of their supervisors had yet to be decided.

According to him, the supervisors could not be immediately transferred because the ministry had yet to reach any agreement to engage them on similar employment terms with SSML, as the street sweepers.

“Subsequently, the supervisors were disengaged and the terms of disengagement were fully adhered to, according to best practices.

“We have the utmost respect for the work done by the street sweepers and their supervisors.

“They remain on our database and we continue to engage the administrators on the process of finding suitable roles for them, as we believe they are critical to the success towards a Cleaner Lagos,’’ he said.

Investigation reveals that the approval for a ward level-based sanitation across the local governments was to integrate a regularly-scheduled residential waste collection.

The regular waste collection with street cleaning was to reduce the incidence of indiscriminate dumping with the placement of neighbourhood dustbins.

The 300 supervisors, working across all the wards, were engaged by a human resource management contractor, SSML.

SSML straddled this multi-disciplinary role linking the residential waste concessionaire, Visionscape, with the Community Sanitation Worker (CSW) scheme and liaising with the local government authorities.

Since the pushback from the PSP operators, the CSWs had to return to the Ministry of the Environment for supervision and residential collection returned to the PSPs.

This has had an unfortunate effect for the supervisors who are now somewhat in a no man’s land.

Having completed the handover of database and documentation with the ministry, the contractor had no alternative but to release the supervisors, given their terminal arrangements.

Mr Adebola Shabi, Special Adviser to the Governor on the Cleaner Lagos Initiative (CLI), had told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) that the government had nothing to do with the news making the rounds that it sacked 300 supervisors.

Shabi said that the CLI contracted SSML on the employment of street sweepers.

According to him, Cleaner Lagos is a government initiative not a contractor, and SSML is in collaboration with Visionscape in their employment contract.

“May be it is Visionscape that sacked, Cleaner Lagos has not sacked anybody.

“SSML is a consultant to government on the engagement of sweepers but we have told them that at the end of June, all sweepers should be handed over to the Ministry of the Environment.

“We don’t know any issue about sack; I have been trying to get the information from Visionscape and they are directing me to their head office.

“The sack has nothing to do with Cleaner Lagos because we did not employ and we did not sack. Lagos State does not believe in sacking people,’’ he said.

NAN reports that the disengagement letters to the supervisors were signed by the Head, Human Resources and Administration, SSML, Mr Oluwatoyin Ayoola.

The letter read: “In light of the recent review of the implementation of the Cleaner Lagos Initiative and the impact of these changes on our operational requirements, as discussed at our meeting held on the 2nd of June 2018, we regrettably write to inform you as it affects your employment with Standard Street Manpower Ltd.

“As discussed, the transfer of the Ward Level Sanitation Programme (Community Sanitation Workers) to the Lagos State Government has rendered your position as Sanitation Supervisor redundant and your services will no longer be required with effect from 14th of June, 2018.’’ (NAN)

– Jun. 19, 2018 @ 15:55 GMT |