The Federal Polytechnic, Bauchi, has lamented that the COVID-19 pandemic affected its consultancy services in 2020, leading to a loss of over N200 million.
This was disclosed by the Managing Director of the Polytechnic Consultancy Services Limited, Ibrahim Labaran, while speaking to journalists on Tuesday on the activities of the firm.
He said the 14 areas of investments owned by the polytechnic, including academic programmes, guest inn, printing and publishing, block industry, water factory, fish farm, restaurant, building and civil engineering firm, were badly hit in 2020 due to COVID-19.
Labaran, who is a onetime registrar of the institution, said, “Across our business arms in 2017, we were able to generate N105m; in 2013 it was about N270m; 2014, N232m; 2016, N224m, but the average is about N200m turnover annually.
“In 2020, we were badly affected by the pandemic, because nothing was moving. There was a lockdown and our hotel, which is one the cash cows, did not record a single guest for three months. Our hotel staff members were idle, but we were able to pay them. There was no turnover during the period.”
He said the consultancy services had been able to avert industrial action from the workers.
According to him, the services approved N30,000 to meet the demands of the workers, who were about to down tools in January this year over unpaid allowance.
Source: https://punchng.com/
