The Federal Executive Council (FEC) has approved the right of men in the federal civil service to proceed on 14-day paternity leave so that they can properly bond with their infants after delivery by their wives.
Fielding questions from State House Correspondents today, Wednesday, September 29, 2921, after FEC’s meeting, the Head of Civil Service of the Federation, Dr Folasade Yemi-Esan stated that the paternity leave initiative is one of the introductions to the newly reviewed Public Service Rules (PSR), which was just approved by FEC.
The policy, she explained, was revised last in 2008.
Folasade Yemi-Esan spoke after the week’s virtual FEC meeting, presided over by the Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
Her word, “We presented today (Wednesday) the memo on the revised of the Public Service Rules. We are all aware that the Public Service Rules are all important tool in the public service, it’s what governs the actions of public servants at work.
“The last time these rules were revised was in 2008. And so, we recognised that the revision was long overdue. And so we put everything that we got into it to ensure that we did the revision.
“These rules ideally are supposed to be revised every five years. But this has taken more than that for us to get the revised PSR 2021. In doing the revision, we had a lot of stakeholder engagements; we asked there was a circular that was put out for call from different sectors and from various groups that wanted amendments to the PSR.
“We set up different committees to look at what we got. And finally a technical committee that consisted of permanent secretaries serving and retired, and directors were put together to look at the zero draft that we got.
“After they reviewed it, we took it to the National Council on Establishment. At the National Council on Establishment, the essence of the PSR was approved. However, there were some revisions that were supposed to be made before making it public.
“Those revisions have been done. And so we brought it to the federal executive council this morning for approval, and we got approval for it. Some of the revisions that we made, the first thing was that the 2008 version had 16 chapters, the 2021 version now has 17 chapters in it”.
Uche Nwosu is a two time Shell Petroleum PLC award winner in the year 2000;
He won the Shell Award on Investigative Journalism and Environmental Cleanliness.
