LABOUR NASS committees task labour ministry on employment
The Senate and the House of Representatives Committees on Employment, Labour and Productivity have tasked the Minister of Labour and Employment, Chris Ngige, to deal frontally with the menace of youth unemployment in the country. They urged him to widen the scope of the various vocational skills acquisition and entrepreneurship development programmes being anchored by the ministry.
In their separate remarks during the ministry’s 2018 budget defence, both the chairmen, Sen. Suleiman Nasif and Rep. Ezenwa Onyebuchi, noted that employment generation was a critical area which the ministry needed to do more upon the passage and appropriation of the 2018 budget.
The committees expressed readiness to visit projects sites of the ministry with a view to ascertain the level of compliance and implementation.
In his presentation, the Minister said the ministry in both structural and service delivery was as a result of the concerted and diligent implementation of budgeted projects and prorammes in the 2017 appropriation despite paucity of budgetary releases.
He said, “We were operating on only 20 per cent budgetary release until January 2018. Our budget performance for 2017 would have surpassed expectation of Nigerians and critical stakeholders if not for the paucity of funds for the implementation of plans and programmes in critical areas of capacity building, strengthening of labour councils and other capital projects which were not fully funded due to the global economic recession.
“We are very hopeful that we will be able to complete many of the outstanding projects and programmes of all the line items of our 2017 budget before capital budget appropriation closes in March 2018. We are happy that the financial portals have just been re-opened. We, however, pledge to do more before the end of March 2018,” Ngige assured.