Many staffers of Access Bank PLC received their sack letters over the weekend via email. As a result of the coronavirus pandemic, the management of the bank announced an immediate retrenchment / job cut down to conform with the exigencies of the global disease. In line with this exercise, most of the Access bank branches will be shut down.
Herbert Wigwe, the Group Managing Director (GMD) of the bank, said in an Instagram video that the “difficult decision” was inevitable and necessary in order to “protect our franchise and make us stronger as we go into the future.
“We probably don’t need as many security men as required even to the fact that we are not going to have all our branches open between now and December.
“We certainly don’t need all the security men. We don’t need all the tea girls. We don’t need all the cleaners. We don’t need all the tellers etc.
“So that number of staff, which represents seventy five per cent of our staff strength, I think is one that we basically need to speak with their employers, with a view to getting them to rationalise to the levels that we think will be necessary to basically sustain a lean but actually customer-service oriented institution,” Mr Wigwe said.