Food and beverages sector set to sack 3m workers due to Forex crisis

Leaders of the Food, Beverage and Tobacco Senior Staff Association, FOBTOB, have alleged that employers of Labor in their sector are planning to sack 3 million workers as most of the companies are finding it hard to get foreign exchange to use in purchasing raw materials for production.

According to Vanguard, President of the association, Quadri Olaleye, spoke at a press briefing in Lagos yesterday March 23rd, where he said that between 2012 and the first half of 2015, over 3,000 workers were sacked in the guise of re-engineering, restructuring, right sizing, downsizing, redundancy and re-organisation.

He said many of the companies gave the same reasons of difficult business terrain, dwindling profit, irregular and insufficient power supply

“The current situation has reached a pathetic level, because it seems all the employers in our sector are in competition with each other on who can lay off the most workers. Every company is now calling for a downsizing of the workforce, and this time under the guise of lack of foreign exchange due to the Federal Government’s recent policy on foreign exchange. We are aware that not all the raw materials used in our industry can be sourced locally. Where they can be found, they are mostly not available in commercial quantity. That is why it is imperative that the government, through the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, takes a second look at the policy on foreign exchange to avoid shutting down the companies in our industry.”he said