LABOURlabour@dailytrust.com ‘Nigerian workers must give Deposit mobilization: Bank workers now premium to health, safety’ victims of money bags – TUC
Vi c e - P r e s i d e n t , Industriall Global Union, Comrade Issa Aremu, has urged workers in the country to give priority to health and safety in their work places.
He said doing so was the best measure to enhance their productivity and measure up to standards required among workforce in the country.
Aremu spoke in Lagos at the world day for health and safety lecture, where he also enjoined employers of labour in Nigeria not to jettison measures that could promote health and safety of their workers.
Nigeria, he added, would be a labour-friendly nation if more measures are taken to boost the safety of workers at work as well as reward them in line with labour laws and international statutes.
In his paper, ‘Health and Safety Issues at Work: Developing Effective Trade Union Response’, Micheal Fadipe, enjoined workers to be conscious of their rights and duties at their work places.
According to him, workers have the rights to refuse work that they believe is dangerous to their health and safety or any other worker in the workplaces.
He added, “To make progress in occupational safety and health within an organization, workers and their representatives have to cooperate with their employers.” Nigeria’s bank workers are now victims of money bags due to the unreasonable targets set by banks in the country, president of the Trade Union Congress of Nigeria(TUC),Comrade Bobboi Kaigama has said.
Kaigama, said in Lagos, that the targets were no longer tenable consequent upon introduction of TSA Policy where government`s agencies and parastatals’ funds are deposited with Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), leaving only private funds for commercial banks to manage.
Kaigama noted that the policy inconsistency on the part of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the Federal Ministry of Finance have stagnated the nation’s economic growth and hindered investment.
To turn the nation’s economy around, he advised the government to urgently tackle the issue of forex and crash in the value of naira.
He called for the banking sector to be sanitized to make room for decent financial system.
He lamented the rot in the nation’s manufacturing sector,saying the development is accentuated by epileptic power supply in the country.
He added, “From the fillers I have received from our affiliates there is no company that currently spends less than half a billion naira to power their plants in a month. Diesel now sells for between N250 and N300 per litre depending on where you are buying from. Those that could not sustain their businesses have left the shores of the country but their products still flood our markets.”