Lawmakers on Tuesday said they would order the arrest of the Managing Director and Chief executive officer of the Mainstreet Bank, Mrs Faith Tuedor-Matthews. She failed to honour the invitation of the House of Representatives Committee on Banking and Currency, the members of the Committee on Tuesday and the lawmakers said she would be arrested, if she fails to appear on October .
The Committee had invited Mrs Tuedor-Matthews to appear before it at an investigative hearing on the petition against the bank for refusing to pay terminal benefits to some staff of the establishment whose appointments were terminated last year.
However, instead of appearing in person, the MD delegated the Executive Director in charge of operations, Mr Anogwe Anyanwu to stand in for her and on behalf of the company.
But the Chairman of the Committee, Jones Onyereri, who was not impressed by the seeming negligence of the bank boss, quickly went into an executive session, where they resolved not to accept anybody else to speak for the bank apart from the MD.
Consequently, after presentation by the aggrieved victims, the Committee suspended the hearing and mandated the MD to appear before it on October 2 unfailingly or risk provoking the Committee to issue a warrant of arrest on her.
Efforts by Mr. Anyanwu to convince the Committee of his competence to represent his bank effectively proved abortive as the Reps had become emotional after listening to the pathetic and agonizing experiences of the sacked bank workers.
The bank had reportedly terminated the appointments of six hundred and seventy of its staff, (most of whom were of management cadre) in the year 2012, and also allegedly refused to pay them their terminal benefits in accordance with the rules of engagement.
The affected workers, whose position was presented to the Committee by Mr Eyo Usanga, told the lawmakers how they were unilaterally sacked by the management of the bank without any reason other than that it was part of restructuring process in the bank.
Mr Usanga said that the affected staff, who were already living in penury made several efforts to get the bank settle them to no avail, regretting that several interventions made by the Ministry of Labour and other concerned bodies in Nigeria could not move the management of the Mainstreet Bank to attend to their plight.
While in search of solution to their predicament, the group made a peaceful protest to the National Assembly few months ago. This attracted the sympathy of the legislators, who then resolved to investigate the matter in order to help the affected Nigerians actualize their demands.
Presenting their demands to the Committee, the ex-workers asked the Bank to pay their terminal benefits (redundancy) according to collective agreement as well as their 2012 annual leave and passage allowance.
They also demanded for the payment of their outstanding housing allowance up to December, 2012, saying that they committed their personal monies to pay their landlords in anticipation of their payments.
They further asked that all their outstanding annual leave days be converted to cash, and that their termination letter be converted to retirement/resignation letter, lamenting that the letter of termination had hindered them from getting jobs elsewhere.