No Worker Will Be Dismissed For Participating In Labour Strike-Ngige

The Minister of Labour and Employment, Chris Ngige has said that no worker in Kaduna state will be dismissed for participating in the strike action led by Nigeria Labour Congress.

The Minister, following the unrest in Kaduna state, had called both the government of Kaduna state and leadership of the NLC to a meeting on Thursday with a view to resolving the face-off between them.

Recall that Kaduna state workers had embarked on a five-day strike action, to protest against the decision of the state government to lay-off thousands of civil servants in the state.

The leaders of the protest had insisted that there was no going back on its five-day strike action which began on Monday.

However, the Minister said that the parties have agreed to constitute a bipartite committee to engage further with the objective of infusing the provision of section 20 of the labour Act CAP L1LFN 2004, to resolve the issue between the government and NLC.

He said, “The meeting agreed that all the listed issues fall within the ambit of redundancy therefore, it was resolved that the principle of redundancy as stated in section 20 of Labour Act, Cap L l Laws of the Federation of Nigeria (LFN) should apply.

“It was agreed that there shall be no further industrial action on these issues and no worker shall be victimised on account of his or her participation in the industrial action.

The meeting also recognized that the current impasse was caused by communication gap between the State government and NLC.

Ngige stated, “The meeting resolved to constitute a ten man Bi-partite Committee camprising six representatives of state government and three officials of the NLC 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 Ll LFN 2004 to resolve the impasse between the State Envernment and the NLC.

“The meeting also resolved that the Committee should have as Chairman, the Head of Service of the Kaduna State 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 tn the Honourable Minister of labour and Employment by Tuesday 25th May. 2021

“The work plan is to itemize the structure and sub-structure in the State and local Government of their activities, time of commencement and envisaged final final tenure of the committee.”

Ends.