Police commission recalls dismissed staff after court pronouncement

THE Police Service Commission (PSC) has approved the recall of all staff who were dismissed but were reinstated by the courts.

Consequently, the commission has put in place processes for their immediate resumption of duty as their letters of recall are currently being processed.

Head of Press and Public Relations of the commission, Ikechukwu Ani, in a statement in Abuja on Wednesday, said that the commission had not declined to comply with the judgment of the National Industrial Court in suit No NICN/ABJ/11/2014 of October 7, 2016, where it was directed to recall some of its staff disengaged due to irregular appointments.

According to him, the Police Service Commission will continue to operate within the confines of the rule of law and will not detract from its position towards obeying court judgments.

Ani noted that the affected staff were only inherited by the present leadership of the commission, which did its best to regularise their defective recruitment to no avail.

He, however, said that the immediate past leadership of the commission, against laid- down rules and regulations guiding recruitment into the Federal Public Service, issued letters of appointments to people without due process.

“There was no advertisement for vacant positions, no interviews held and no financial provision for payment of their salaries. The newly-recruited staff worked for five months without salaries,” he said.

The commission spokesman, however, added that the present commission, led by Mr Mike Okiro, a retired Inspector General of Police (IGP), on resumption of duty, wrote to the Accountant-General of the Federation requesting for payment for the said staff, but the request was turned down because the recruitment did not follow due process, and as such, the recruited staff were not captured in the budget and the Integrated Personnel Payroll System (IPPIS).

Ani revealed that the commission also wrote to the Presidency for a waiver, which was also turned down. It was after all these efforts that the commission invited the affected staff for a meeting, where they were briefed on the situation and advised to go, pending the regularisation of the exercise.

Since then, efforts had been on-going towards resolving the matter, “but the Commission has decided to recall them in line with the judgment of the National Industrial Court.”