The Honourable Minister of Labour and Employment Sen. Chris Ngige has disclosed that the present Administration is working assiduously to ensure that all ratified International Labour Organization’s Conventions are implemented with prompt report rendition.
Ngige, stated this recently, in his Abuja office when he received on working visit, a team of expert from the International Labour Organization (ILO).
In his words “It is important to express our efforts at aligning our labour laws with the contemporary issues in labour administration and in the spirit of ILO convention to which we are a signatory. In this regards, efforts are being made to fast track the passage of the outstanding labour laws by the National Assembly with necessary review and amendment in tandem with development in International Labour Standards and the dynamics in Nigeria labour administration system, policies and practices.
“In order to ensure that progress was made in updating these outstanding labour bills, officials of the Ministry of Labour and Employment recently undertook in-house validation meeting to effect corrections and inputs made during the tripartite plus meeting and prepare the bills for further scrutiny, validation and consensus building by all stakeholders. I want to assure you that we will again re-energize the various departments so we can speed up on the revalidation of the bills to see the one we can again get into law.” the Minister stressed.
In addition, Ngige said that Nigeria is one of the front line member states of the International Labour Organization having been recently elected into the governing board of the ILO both as a government representative, workers representatives and employers’ representative; hence it cannot be seen to be lagging behind.
“I want to assure you that with the technical assistance you have rendered, we will work diligently to ensure that we render outstanding reports in September as stipulated; we will do so and I want to assure you that we will not fail”. He assured.
Earlier in his remarks, the team leader of the international labour organization Mr. David Dakenoo Kwabla, stated that the mission came at the request from the Government of Nigeria through the ILO to come and build capacity for the Ministry and relevant stakeholder in the country to enable the government of Nigeria to fulfill its obligation on the reporting on international labour standards which are outstanding.
He stated that for the past 2 days there has been an intensive training program for both the ministry and other relevant stakeholders such as the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Trade Union Congress of Nigeria (TUC) and the Nigeria Employers Consultative Association (NECA). He noted that the training program was successful. And that they have come to interact with the Minister and other relevant stakeholders in the labour sector with the aim of facilitating the reports on ratified conventions by Nigeria which are due in September this year.
