Senator Iroegbu in Abuja
The Minister of Labour and Employment, Senator Chris Ngige, has read a riot act to the heads of agencies and parastatals under his ministry to find creative initiatives out of the country’s economic recession or be sanctioned.
To this end, Ngige warned that federal government would not tolerate incompetence from the parastatals and agencies of government, cautioning that the changing times demand dynamic leadership to meet the extant challenges.
The minister gave this marching orders yesterday during his working visit to the headquarters of three parastatals under the Ministry of Labour and Employment.
He said all hands must be on deck to push the nation out of recession by 2017.
Addressing the management and staff of the National Directorate of Employment (NDE), Ngige insisted that at a time Nigeria has slided into recession, the NDE which has a special mandate for job creation ought to distinguish itself in the joint effort to move the country out of recession through massive job creation in the area of agriculture and mining which were hitherto neglected.
“We must battle recession from all fronts. We must take Nigeria out of recession in 2017 and the NDE shall lead the way. This agency must lead domestic production in agriculture and mining. Nigeria must stop the importation of rice and other items we can produce here. Therefore, the NDE must redesign its programmes for the 2017 to align with massive job creation in agriculture, to sufficiently feed the nation and create jobs en mass.”
At the headquarters of the Nigeria Social Industrial Trust Fund (NSITF), the minister tasked the management of NSITF, to expand the scope of the operation of the funds to capture Nigerians working in the private sector to enable them benefit from the scheme as it is a noble scheme that is aimed at providing insurance cover and compensation for injuries and accident suffered at work places.
He regretted that certain challenges have made it impossible for NSITF to meet up with his mandate.
“The bitter truth is that NSITF has not lived up to expectations. It is high time we changed our old ways so that the fund can fulfilled its mandate. We must show more seriousness and face the work more squarely,” he said.
During the visit to the National Productivity Centre (NPC), Ngige observed that: “One of the major problems facing the nation is its inability to adequately measure her productivity. No nation has ever made progress without proper attention to productivity measurement, in such a situation the citizenry is not productivity conscious, with serious consequences on national output and remunerations.”
The minister added that “the present administration of President Muhammadu Buhari has productivity as a priority but a lot of Nigerians do not know and appreciate what you are doing, there is a need therefore for a lot of sensitisation.”
Earlier, the Director General of the National Productivity Centre, Dr. Kashim Yunusa Akor, revealed that the centre was working on development of productivity wage linkage system template aimed at ensuring that wage determination is guided by workers’ productivity amongst other variables.
The Acting Director General of the NDE, Mr. Kunle Obayan, in his remark, lamented the poor budgetary allocation to his agency, this he said has hampered the ability of the agency to perform optimally
While the Acting Managing Director of the NSITF, Ismail Agaka assured the minister that his agency, come 2017 will work assiduously towards enlisting more companies into the scheme and respond promptly to claims.
