Sen. Chris Ngige, the Minister of Labour and Employment on Monday charged various parastatals under his ministry to fulfil the mandate given to them by the Federal Government.
Ngige said this on a familiarisation visit to the National Productivity Centre (NPC), the National Directorate of Employment (NDE) and the Nigeria Social Insurance Trust Fund (NSITF).
In NDE, Ngige said that the parastatal was special due to the mandate given to it to create jobs for the teeming unemployed youths in the country.
“You have a special mandate to create employment and in so doing, you are permitted to design programmes that will assist you to do that so that many Nigerians will have employment.
“When you design, you must implement and by so doing combat mass unemployment.
“You know what our unemployment figure shows as at today, it is very high.
“Worsen by the fact that our country has gone into economic recession and this recession this time around is profound, ‘’ he said.
He said that there were lots of youths who were rooming the streets and had become easy prey to be recruited for insurgency and massive destruction of oil pipelines in the country.
Ngige said that NDE must design prgrammes that would address mass unemployment with a collective action.
“You are supposed to synchronise all your programmes to go into agriculture and mining majorly which are the dynamics of the economic presently.
“What programmes have you designed to get in miners and make them realised that government can assist them, you must design programmes and go to them.
“Have you established presence at all the agriculture centres, especially rice production zones, so that Nigeria will stop importation of rice, palm oil, among others.
“We must tackle the areas where we can produce food and create jobs because food is very important and so is job creation, so you must think out of your box to meet your mandate, ‘’he said.
The minister, who also visited the NSITF headquarter charged the agency to meet its expectations.
He said that the organisation must ensure it had complete data base of all employers and employees under its scheme.
“The fund must be open its net to catch both workers in the public and private sector of the economy.
“Because the more people you capture, the better for the growth of the fund.
“You must also ensure that defaulting employers are made to pay workers compensation and entitlements, ‘’he said.
Ngige, who also visited the NPC called on them to be steadfast in the delivery of their services.
Speaking, Dr Kashim Akor, the Director-General of NPC decried low funding from the budgetary allocation to the agency.
Akor said that due to lack of funding, the agency had been unable to sensitise the citizenry on the need for productivity mindset and culture.
“We also lack cooperate office accommodation and accumulated debts to landlords, dearth of official vehicles, among others,’’ he said.
He called on the minister to use its good office to ensure that they received appropriate funding to manage the agency.
Mr Ismail Agaka-Mohammed, the Director- General of NDE said that the NSITF had registered 51,576 employers under the Workers’ Compensation Act from July 1, 2011till date.
He said that out of the over 51,000, 16, 909 employers were registered between Jan. and Nov. 2016.
He said that NSITF had paid benefit to 8, 813 workers to the tune of about N789 million.
Agaka-Mohammed said that the agency was using legal action to ensure that employers paid workers their compensation.
However, the NDE Acting, the Director General, Mr Kunle Obayan said that lack of fund had stalled the agency from acquiring office space.
Join BusinessDay whatsapp Channel, to stay up to date
Open In Whatsapp
