* We won’t joke with workers’ welfare, Nami assures
Members of the Nigeria Civil Service Union (NCSU), Federal Inland Revenue Service unit have urged the management of the agency to motivate its staff in the task of generating revenue to meet its targets.
The Chairman of Nigeria Civil Service Union, FIRS unit in Karu Local Government Area of Nasarawa State, Comrade Hassan Abdulrahman Idris said FIRS generated the sum of N4.178 trillion in 2020 amid coronavirus challenges because of the commitment of staff.
He spoke during a seminar on Friday, lamenting that staff of FIRS were not given palliative during the COVID-19 lockdown, as was done for their colleagues in other agencies, insisting that staff morale is at the core of good performance.
The seminar which was titled: “Staff Attitudinal Change as Basis for Revenue Generation”, according to the Chairman, would have been held last year but was aborted due to COVID-19 pandemic.
He said: “The performance on our collection is not bad as some people may think because recently the Executive Chairman in one of his functions said, FIRS raked in the total sum of N4.178 trillion as revenue out of personnel target of N4.239 trillion, about 96.6% of the revenue goal for 2020.”
“There is how any management can rise above the ability and efficiency of its staff,” he said.
He noted that FIRS is a strategic revenue-generating agency of government that must not slack in human capital development through training and retraining at home and abroad, adding that other agencies that gave priority attention to the training of their staff abroad tended to do better in their mandate.
“To buttress my point, our counterparts in other agencies are often sponsored abroad for either seminar or training and this sometimes makes us inferior or second hand.
“So our unit is challenging and appealing to the Council to improve on our condition to enable FIRS to get more.”
An Assistant Director, Aminu Samaila, assured members of the union that the new management under Muhammad Nami holds all staff with regard, noting that in the last one year he resumed as Chairman, he has paid statutory entitlements of staff in bulk.
According to him, Nami operates an open door policy and is always ready to meet with the union to dialogue on issues when the need arises.