Reps ask FG to stop take off of 774,000 jobs

The House of Representatives Tuesday at plenary asked the Federal government to halt the take-off of the 774,000 special works programme scheduled to commence from January 5, 2021.

The Green Chamber particularly urged the Minister of State for labour to stop with immediate effect all processes leading to the commencement of the programme until the list of beneficiaries compiled by the National Directorate of Employment (NDE) in each state is used as a basis of selection.

It also further the Minister of Finance not to release funds for the programme until all issues that are related to non-compliance to due process are resolved and mandated the Committees on Labour and Productivity and Legislative compliance to ensure compliance
and report to the House in the next week.

The while adopting a motion of urgent public importance sponsored moved Olajide Olatubonsuni (APC, Oyo), the House also condemned the sack of the Director-General of the National Directorate of Employment (NDE), Mohammed Ladan-Argungu and advised that he be reinstated immediately.

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Moving the motion, Olatubonsuni noted that the National Assembly appropriated a sum of N52 billion in the 2020 fiscal year for the Special Public Works Programme out of which each beneficiary will be paid N20,000 per month over a period of three months.

He recalled that the Minister of State for Labour inaugurated a state selection committee for each state of the Federation while NDE as part of its statutory mandate was responsible for the registration of the beneficiaries.

The lawmaker expressed concern that the state selection committees in most states of the Federation bypassed and ignored the list of beneficiaries compiled by NDE and forwarded a separate list of purported beneficiaries to the office of the Minister of State for Labour.

Olatubonsuni said he was: “Greatly concerned that most Nigerians that have submitted their names to the NDE offices in their respective states have been unjustly excluded from this programme which the Minister of State for Labour announced will start on January 5, 2021.

“Worried that if this programme is allowed to go ahead without following due process, a bad precedent would have been set for implementing programmes of this nature in the future”.