Get Oldham Working still the priority

Photo: Darren Robinson

Councillor Abdul Jabbar.

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OLDHAM Council's cabinet member for finance and human resources fears people will think the council is being contradictory by making 122 workers unemployed and insists its aim remains to get Oldham working.

Councillor Abdul Jabbar said he was worried about the message being sent out by the proposals, considering how much focus the council has put on its Get Oldham Working campaign.

He insists it was not a decision taken lightly and that a focus still remains on creating job opportunities in the borough.

He said: "It does worry me slightly and people will be forgiven for thinking we're giving out contradictory messages. I can assure you that our priority is to get Oldham working.

"This is not a choice we had, we were forced into this decision.

"This is a very sad situation. I didn't come into local government to do this but we were forced into it because of the cuts made to local government finance by this Government. There is no doubt that this proposal will mean that a significant number of staff will lose their jobs and I'm extremely sorry about that - it's not something we do lightly, it is forced upon us.

"There is no other way of achieving this level of saving in one financial year without making people redundant."

Councillor Jabbar also said that the council was working hard to provide other opportunities for a number of the 122 council employees that lose their jobs.

He added: "There are a number of vacancies that exist now and there will be some people threatened with redundancy that we will be able to deploy to another services by training and we are working with our trade union staff to be able to do that."