Workers casualisation, contravention of Labour laws – Kachikwu

“The duties of an employer and an employee are clearly stated in the labour laws. So an employee is free to either employ or sack. But you are not allowed to leave someone hanging in the middle of a divide,”

the minister said in a live interview on Channels Television.

Kachikwu said the Federal Government has already stepped into some alleged cases of workers casualisation in the industry and that the government was currently running a survey to enable it to give the challenge a better solution.

“Some cases have been brought to us which we have looked into. And while we found that some cases were justified, we also found that some of those cases were wrongfully meted out.

“We are currently running a survey of the oil industry to enable us see if the case of casualisation is truly rampant as said by union members. But at the end of the day, the labour laws of this country are very clear and we need to enforce it”, he said.

The Nigerian Labour Congress, NLC, had during the May Day celebration on May 1, drawn the attention of the government to increasing level of casualisation and outsourcing of workers in the country, saying it would no longer tolerate such indiscipline in the country.

Addressing workers and other guests in Abuja venue of the May Day celebration, President of NLC, Comrade Ayuba Wabba, lamented that, “According to a Report published by the Campaign for Democratic Workers Rights, 45 percent of the workforce in Nigeria operates as casual workers.

“Fifty percent of the burden of casualisation exists in the downstream oil and gas and banking sub-sectors of the economy and some other workplaces. Casual workers in our workforce operate under very precarious conditions with near total denial of the benefits associated with permanent and decent work.

“Nigerian workers can no longer offer their labour to slave drivers whose only interest is profit maximisation and capital mobility”.