The Federal Government has set up a 10-man committee to resolve the impasse between the Kaduna State Government and the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC).
Minister of Labour and Employment Chris Ngige said this after a closed door meeting with the NLC and representatives of Kaduna State Government on Thursday in Abuja.
Ngige said that the meeting recognised that the current impasse was caused by communication gap between the two parties.
He said that the meeting resolved to constitute a Bi-partite Committee comprising six representatives of State Government and three officials of the NLC.
”They are to engage further with the objective of reverting with a work plan on how to integrate the provision of section 20 of the Labour Act CAP LFN 2004 to resolve the impasse between the State Government and the NLC.
”The meeting also resolved that the Committee should have as Chairman, the Head of Service of the Kaduna State Government and assisted by a Deputy National President of the NLC.
”The Committee is expected to revert with the work plan for peaceful resolution of all issues in contention to the Honourable Minister of Labour and Employment by Tuesday, May 24,” he said.
Ngige added that the work plan is to itemize the structure and sub-structure in the State and Local Government of their activities.
He further said that this also include the time of commencement and envisaged final tenure of the Committee. Or they should make recommendations if in its wisdom it thinks the committee should be a Permanent Standing Committee,” he said.
He, therefore, said that it was agreed that there shall be no further industrial action on these issues.
“No worker shall be victimized on account of his or her participation in the Industrial action,”he said.
In his remarks, Commissioner of Local Government Affairs in Kaduna, Jaafaru Sabi, who represented Governor Nasir El-Rufai stated that the state government was very displeased and condemned the actions of the NLC in its attempt to shut down the state.
He outlined some of the efforts of the state government to promote the welfare of civil servants, including the implementation of the N30,000 minimum wage.
The commissioner disclosed that the state government had employed 25,000 primary school teachers and 1,700 science teachers in secondary schools, besides other employment processes that were already in the advanced stage.
According to him, the public service consumes four out of every five naira the state has while salaries and allowances take a huge chunk of revenue allocations to the local governments.
NLC National President, Ayuba Wabba, on his part, thanked the Federal Government for its intervention, saying the issue that brought the parties to the meeting was because of the state government’s policy to downsize its workforce.
He explained that the crux of the issue was the payment of emoluments to affected staff during redundancy, stressing that this was never done.
The NLC president stressed that the state government never engaged with the workers before disengaging them, insisting that the right thing was never done.
He accused the state government of ignoring the series of letters sent to it requesting that the workers should be engaged before being disengaged from service.
The decision to protest and to go on strike, according to him, is the last resort and labour never went to any office to disrupt any service during the protest in Kaduna.
Wabba informed the meeting that all that the labour wanted was transparency in the process of disengaging the workers
