Government may pay ‘Scarce Skills Allowances’ to discourage brain drain

The Nigerian Government on Monday said it was considering payment of “Scarce Skills Allowances” to skilled Nigerians seeking better life beyond the shores of the country.

This was disclosed by the Chairman of National Salaries, Income and Wages Commission (NSIWC), Chief Richard Egbule, while speaking to journalists in Abuja.

He noted, however, that an attempt by the commission to introduce this policy years ago did not succeed.

“Some years back, we looked at how to attract our highly skilled citizens that work outside the country and discourage those within the country from migrating to other countries.

“We thought that you cannot create a special salary structure for them but what we could do was put them on the same salary structure but introduce what we call scarce skills allowance.

“The idea is that after receiving the salary that is obtainable in the country, you have this extra remuneration to make their pay a bit comparable to what they could receive outside the country.

Read also: Why there is delay in minimum wage implementation —Nigerian govt

“The problem, however, arose with the definition of scarce skills. Government set up a committee and the commission did the whole work gathering stakeholders to define what scarce skills meant.

“What we aimed to target are those skills that are not readily available in the country, that if you need them, you may have to resort to going abroad.

“The issue it created was that people in some areas, especially the health sector tended to mistake scarce skills with specialisation.

“So, if you go somewhere, get a certificate on something, then its scarce skills. Scarce skills is something you can’t find easily.

“You can specialise but if there are many of you that have that specialisation then it doesn’t make it scarce. So that became an issue,’’ he said.

By Babatunde Alao…

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