Herbert Wigwe, the group managing director of Access Bank, has mulled the bank\u2019s planned mass retrenchment of its workforce over what he said was the outcome of the COVID-19 lockdown.<\/p>\n
The bank boss who spoke via video conferencing in a town hall meeting with the bank\u2019s staff said those to be affected by the mass retrenchment are 75% of the bank\u2019s staff, most of whom are outsourced and are offering \u201cnon-essential services.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe probably don\u2019t need as many securitymen as required, even to the fact that we are not gonna have all our branches open between now and December. We don\u2019t need all the tea girls. We don\u2019t need all the cleaners. We don\u2019t need all the tellers etcetera, etcetera,\u201d Mr. Wigwe said in a video obtained by The Trent<\/strong> on Thursday, April 30, 2020.<\/p>\n \u201cThe second has to do with our professional cost. Now that is one that is very tricky and it is tricky because I do understand and appreciate that its gonna, you know, bring its own pain to staff. We basically have to make the adjustments the same way you sounded when we spoke 10 days ago with respect to basically cutting down cost.<\/p>\n \u201cI will be the first to take the hit and I\u2019m gonna take the largest pay cut, which would be as much as 40 percent. The rest we would have to cascade right through the institution. Everybody may have to make some adjustments of some sort.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Herbert Wigwe, one of the principal conveners of CA-COVID<\/a>, a coalition of Nigeria\u2019s private sector against COVID-19 said the proposed measures are aimed at keeping the bank afloat in the face of the economic realities of COVID-19.<\/p>\n CA-COVID which is led by Africa\u2019s richest man, Aliko Dangote, is credited to have raised about N30 billion, feeding up to 1.7 million Nigerian,\u00a0 ordered 400,000 coronavirus test kits, and building isolation centres worth over N500 million isolation.<\/p>\n Access Bank has been giving its involvement with the COVID-19 intervention a strong PR push, sending out regular emails to news platforms<\/a>, including The Trent<\/strong>.\u00a0 The running thread of the press statements from the bank\u2019s publicist is that Mr. Wigwe is leading the coalition.<\/p>\n Industry watchers believe that Mr. Wigwe\u2019s retrenchment policy affects the most vulnerable of his staffers and will be counter-productive for many families especially the poor if the books of the bank truly show just as his philanthropy does, that it has the capacity to cushion the effect at such a precarious moment in history.<\/p>\n