• Friday, March 29, 2024
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Job creation, anti-corruption top agenda as Ngige resumes

Ngige calls for inspection of minimum wage implementation

 

Chris Ngige, who was on Wednesday sworn in alongside 42 other ministers by President Muhammadu Buhari, has said that job creation, the war against corruption and industrial harmony will take prominent places as he returned to the Ministry of Labour and Employment where he served as Minister during President Buhari’s first term.

The Minister in his address during a meeting with the management and staff of the Ministry on Thursday, said his return was to consolidate on what the ministry had been doing before and possibly fine-tune and do it better. He added that the ministry under him would be proactive in creating employment through cooperative policies that would make all the states in the federation to create jobs in agriculture, mining and industrial sectors.

“Employment is in the name of our Ministry and People do not know that we do not employ here, we don’t employ but it is our duty to make sure that we monitor employment in all government agencies and have ou returns that we now compare,” the minister said.

“As a matter of fact, it is our returns that we transmit to the National Bureau of Statistics. We also monitor job losses and apart from transmitting job losses to NBS we also stem the tide of job losses through proactive action,” Ngige said.

“We will be proactive in creating employment on a bigger scale through our department of cooperatives which unfortunately the Ministry of Agriculture is holding on to today tenaciously and when we get it you can be sure that we will churn out cooperative policies that will make all states of the federation to key into it so that people through it can be self-employed and with that we can create a lot of jobs  in the agricultural sector, in the mining sector and even in the industrial sector,” he said.

He warned the Ministry staff to shun corruption stressing that corruption is given impetus by opacity. “When everything is open it is not easy to be corrupt so our parastatals, in particular, must know what they are doing, the financial regulations are there, which instructed them to give financial balances to their main ministry and we must enforce it.

“Our parastatals will submit their own budget in the Ministry and come to defend it because if there is budget padding it is because parastatals invite National Assembly members to come and warehouse padded things into their budget.  That must be stopped.  And any parastatal under this ministry that does that will be sanctioned so that we can live within our means,” he said.

He pledged to address industrial relations issues adding that the ministry would implement agreements reached with trade unions.

” What we don’t control here will spill out and affect other areas of the economy because once the workers down tools whether in the public sector or the private sector there is loss of productivity, there is loss of man-hours and there is loss of earnings. So we in this Ministry have to be on our toes all the time,” he said.

Ngige had shortly after his inauguration on Wednesday declared to put an end to the lingering crisis around the implementation of the new national minimum wage, stressing that the President Buhari-led administration was committed to ensuring that workers begin to enjoy the new wage. He also promised to work with the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) and other stakeholders to actualise the aim.

Minister of State, Labour and Employment, Tayo Alasoudura, who also resumed duty at the Federal Secretariat complex on Thursday, stated his commitment to work together with all stakeholders to achieve the objectives of the ministry.