As the Cross River State Civil Service recruitment exercise to fill recently declared vacancies in the state service, gathers momentum, we can reveal that 32, 341 applications have so far been received by the Cross River State Civil Service Commission for 500 job openings in the state service.
A breakdown of this figure shows that 17,348 of the 32, 341 or 53.6% applications are female while 14,977 or 46.3% applications are male.
The scale up of female application figures is not unconnected to glaring economic pressure on most women to work, earn money and support themselves and families, especially for the married ones, one economic expert maintained to us.
Poor remuneration, was identified as the major reason the number of male applications dipped. “I have a plantation and cocoa farms my father left behind. I have managed them for four years now and the return on investment is better than anything you can offer me in the state civil service. Look at the fact that even gratuity and pension that use to be what a major attractive cushion for civil service work, is no more available as at when due, so why will we leave our high yielding farms and go and suffer, telling ourselves that we are civil servants? The civil service is no more attractive, let the women go there and work, most of us the men are earning better gratuities and pensions in the farms”, Samuel Osim, a cocoa farmer in Ikom, told us.