Ngige charges parastatals to deliver on mandates

Sen. Chris Ngige, the Minister of Labour and Employment, has charged parastatals under his ministry to fulfill the mandate given to them by the Federal Government.

Ngige said this on a familiarization visit to the National Productivity Centre (NPC), the National Directorate of Employment (NDE), and the Nigeria Social Insurance Trust Fund (NSITF).

At the NDE, Ngige said that the parastatal was special due to the its mandate to create jobs for 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 it is very high today.

“This has been worsened 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 roaming the streets, and had become easy prey to be recruited for insurgency and destruction of oil pipelines in the country.

Ngige said that NDE must design programmes that would address mass unemployment with a collective action.

“You are supposed to synchronize 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 realize that government can assist them? You must design programmes and go to them.

“Have you established a presence at all the agriculture centres, especially rice production zones, so that Nigeria will stop the 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-the-box to meet your mandate, ‘’he said.

The minister, who also visited the NSITF headquarters, charged the agency to meet its expectations.

He said that the organization must ensure it had the complete database of all employers and employees under its scheme.

“The fund must be open its net to catch both workers in the public and private sectors 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, at the NPC, called steadfastness in service delivery.

Speaking, Dr. Kashim Akor, NPC’s Director-General, decried low funding from the budgetary allocation to the agency.

Akor said that due to lack of funding, the agency had been unable to sensitize the citizenry on the need for productivity mindset and culture.

“We also lack corporate office accommodation and have accumulated debts to landlords, as well as the lack of official vehicles, among others,’’ he said.

He called on the minister to use his good offices to ensure appropriate funding to manage the agency.

Mr. Ismail Agaka-Mohammed, the Director-General of the NSITF, said that it had registered 51,576 employers under the Workers’ Compensation Act from July 1, 2011 till 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 benefits 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.