Labour ministry, NSE to partner on workplace inspection

The Ministry of Labour and Employment has expressed interest in working with the Nigerian Society of Engineers on the inspection of workplaces across the country.

The Minister of Labour and Employment, Senator Chris Ngige, made this known during a working visit by members of the NSE led by its President, Otis Anyaeji.

Ngige said the ministry was planning to recruit safety engineers and technicians in its Occupational Safety and Health department in order to boost the inspection capacity of the ministry at workplaces and engineering sites.

He pledged to ensure local content inclusion and decent job creation by government contract bidders.

The minister said, “In any given contract, the labour content must be determined. We intend to henceforth take a critical look at every council memo to ensure that it addresses the issue of local content with a view to ensuring that Federal Government contracts generate jobs for the teeming unemployed Nigerians.

“We will do everything possible to make sure that jobs are not only created, but are also decent jobs that can guarantee the safety of Nigerians in their workplaces.”

Ngige urged members of the society to key into the economic recovery programme of the Federal Government by being at the forefront of blue collar job creation, saying those jobs were capable of revitalising the nation’s economy.

“You are very important to the society, especially at this time that the government has an economic recovery and growth programme. We want the engineers to key into this programme by taking the lead in the shift from dependence on white collar jobs to the blue collar sector,” Ngige said.

He urged the society to ensure that all workers were insured under the Employee Compensation Act to guarantee their protection and adequate compensation in the case of a workplace accidents.

Earlier in his remarks, Anyaeji expressed the society’s readiness to partner the Ministry of Labour and Employment in job creation and industrial safety, saying the NSE would harness its specialist health, safety and environmental capacities to ensure that workplace standards were set and sustained.