Ikeja Electric fires 229 in ‘strategic repositioning’

Ikeja Electric, one of Nigeria’s largest electricity distribution company, has announced the sack of 229 members of staff in a “strategic re-positioning for better efficiency”.

The company also revealed that it had employed 603 people between January 2015 and February 2016 in a bid to keep with its commitment to drive service excellence.

In a statement by Felix Ofulue, the company’s head of corporate communications, the company added that it also promoted 74 others staff in the period under review.

“The promotions and additions are part of the company’s drive to ensure that it has a pool of competent and capable resources to manage the legacy challenges the company is currently facing and also to position it as the provider of choice wherever energy is consumed,” Ofulue said.

“At Ikeja Electric, we place a high premium on human capital development as a vital component of driving ourr commitment to providing the best possible service to customers within its network.”

Ofulue denied that the company sacked 400 members of staff at any time, adding that the 229 sacked was in accordance with best practice.

“We will like to state that the number of employees that were disengaged was 229 and not 400 as earlier reported.

“In accordance with best practice, employees in the organization went through a thorough, transparent and objective performance assessment exercise and those that were deemed to be performing below the required performance objectives were exited from the organization.

“This is also to ensure that Ikeja Electric maintains an assemblage of the right staff in the right roles that are equipped to perform optimally.”

He noted that Ikeja Electric will continue to implement robust human capital optimization policies geared towards promoting efficiency and service excellence.

The company added that in 2015, over 245 unique learning and development interventions were conducted with over 2000 staff benefitting from the training programmes.

“A job regrading exercise was also conducted to flatten the previous 17 career levels to only 9 career levels thus allowing for accelerated growth,” the Disco said.

“As a responsible company, we remain unflinching in our resolve to ‘light up’ lives, homes and businesses of all our customers.

“We also acknowledge and appreciate the feedback of our esteemed customers and remain committed to ensuring equitable, reliable and transparent distribution of power within our network.”

Ikeja Electric adds that it has scaled up its metering programme to meet the expectations of its customers and further reduce the agitation against estimated billing.