Finally, the long-awaited mass housing scheme for workers is set for launch. In this report, MOSES JOHN who spoke to the NLC President, Abdulwaheed Omar, on the project, among other national issues, writes on the encounter
2014 May Day and the workers housing scheme?
Provision of housing especially affordable housing for Nigeria workers is a major priority on ground for now. We believe shelter is very important particularly to those who will spend the most productive part of their lives working and therefore the best we can do for them is to ensure that as much as possible they get shelter by the time they bow out of service. At least they will not continue to be tenants in other people house that is why the Nigeria Labour Congress has decided to go headlong on the issue of trying to provide housing for Nigerian workers. And because of that we are able to enter into partnership with a number of developers. First we have a very good working relationship with Federal Mortgage Bank. In fact it was that good relationship that led us also to solicit Nigerian workers support for the continuation of the deduction of the national housing fund, because we have now seen that there is a new Federal Mortgage Bank that is committed to serving the Nigerian workers just as the aim of the establishment of that organization is. We are at one hand partnering with Federal Mortgage Bank alongside Nigeria Employers Consultative Association, NECA, and jointly NLC and TUC on provision of housing to workers. Another very important front is the Kriston-Lally partnership. They are developer from Greece, we have known their antecedents, we have cross-checked and discovered that they are a group that we can work with. That is the financier and we have signed an agreement and you can see the enthusiastic manner workers came paying the 10 per cent requirement, to the extent that they have to stop at a point, to wait till when the first phase is delivered. We will now move on but unfortunately the initial time was that by June this year the first batch of houses with the Kriston-Lally would have been completed and given out to the subscribers but there was a hitch with the financier. You know the way financial transactions are being carried out, they have to agree with a local finance bank, which will now issue a bank guaranteed and that local bank will have to liaise with one of the major international bank like the HSPC and so on. But along the line the local bank could not be able to fix it very well with the international bank. As a result they were not able to issue the require bank guarantee that necessitated us from also moving from one local bank to another, but that have been finalized that is why the houses are not ready. But just last week, we went round and saw the ground ready, cleared to commence the building of the houses in Abuja here, and the place is called Kasarna. It is a beautiful site, I am sure workers will be happy having homes around that areas and it is a fast developing area, with many other developments going on there. That is why the ground breaking would be performed by April 30, (yesterday). You will all be there to see for yourself and the developer have all their materials on ground and what we expected was that they will commence immediately after the ground breaking. Their expectation is also that within the next six months, some reasonable numbers would have been completed and we will immediately be given it to the subscribers who have already made their deposits and who had also met other requirements. From another angle, we are also trying to partner with a company that is called Good Homes and we went into agreement, they will also develop houses. but for the houses to be cheaper and affordable to workers, we also work together and requested for a parcel of land to be given in the name of Nigerian workers. This one we are jointly doing between NLC and TUC and I must thank Mr. President of the Federal Republic for having graciously approved and also the minister of FCT who also gave out a very large parcels of land about 300 hectares in the name of NLC and TUC for the exclusive development of houses for Nigerian workers. So we also want to tidy up with the Good Homes just as we have tidy up with Kriston-Lally. What we expect is that they will commence development at any stage when it is conducive and is more auspicious.
Still on the N960 billion NLC-Kriston Lally workers housing schemes, the promise is to hand over to the workers, who have subscribed by December this year, with the delay as you explained, is December date still feasible and are you assuring them?
Well baring all unforeseen circumstances, we try to work with the people we know that can delivered and we also put a lot of safety checks so that Nigerian workers will not be taking for granted. I want to hope that base on what the Kriston-Lally has been feeding us, that once they commence, they will be able to deliver houses in six months and I want to believe them.
NLC said the May Day will be held under a tight security, what is your take on the insecurity situation in the country and the attitude of politicians?
We are talking about national security. What we are saying is that the politicians play a very serious role in blowing the situation. In the first place their conduct, secondly it is disturbing that when things like this happen, you see people quickly begin to throw blames. For example, the major political parties will be blaming one another on this issue. Instead of coming together to salvage the situation, they will be throwing blames. At a point I said we are giving room for other criminals to be perpetrating their crime and modeled it the Boko Haram way so that the security agents will not look their way. All eyes will be in the direction of Boko Haram. This is not a very good way to approach thing. I had reasons to say that I don’t even like the way some of our politicians make pronouncement immediately after the attack including Mr. President, because if you and I will say it is Boko haram it means nothing, but if the President of the country said it is you who did this, it is an authority, then the security agencies don’t have much work to do rather than to look for Boko Haram. I thought the best thing is for Mr. President to say this is an unfortunate happening and we are going to fish out whoever is responsible without laying claims on any group. That would have given the security agencies the latitude to look everywhere, you can never say whether it is actually the Boko Haram or somebody who try to symbolize how Boko Haram does the thing but they know that if they do it this way, you will focus on Boko haram and they will go free. I also said that for us to face the security challenges we must start doing things differently, we have to go away from the conventional ways of doing things. I think it is time for all tiers of governments to collaborate with a view to finding lasting solution to the insurgency. When 9/11 happened in the USA, it looks like a wakeup call which led to the President saying it is a new challenge, and therefore require new approach and that led to the creation of Department of Homeland Security and is not just creating a department but they trained people specially for detection of internal crime and terrorism and so on. I expect that we should be learning from these advanced countries in this direction but for me there is nothing wrong from sending security agents on a very rigorous training for crime detection even within the people. I know that Nigeria had really changed, because those days when we are young if you said someone is a CID, they mixed with people to get information and that was why a lot of crime were been nipped on the board but today the politicians have changed everything. Now even at the conference last week, someone was saying they called themselves secret service but they put boldly DSS. What is secret again? I also said that one major thing I have notice was that In those days, the secret service people were sent to various places mixed up with people that you may not even detect them, the universities, colleges, markets and other areas just to get information but today bulk of these security are going with either the governor, President, or ministers while the common is left to do what he or she wants. These are some of the areas I feel we have to do things differently, if you don’t start detecting crime at the early stage then you will always wait till the havoc is done before you start reacting.
On the issue of rebasing, what is your opinion?
On the rebasing, for me it has no bearing with the Nigerian citizens whatsoever because it haven’t changed anything. It is just on papers. To say this is what we are doing, has it impacting, is there any positive change in the lives of Nigerians, the way they live in their income, wellbeing? These should be the major thing we should be looking at and not just rebasing, and for anybody to just say that we are now better off, and that our GDP has grown while on ground there is nothing to show that actually, it has translated to better the lives of Nigerians.
But they cited the Nigeria movie and music industry as creating largely to the outcome?
I agree that film and music industry have employed a number of youths because films are being produced daily. We have actors and other workers and so on, but to aggregate it with entirety of Nigerians, what percentage of employment has the industry provided to justify that this rebasing will be the course of that. Look at Agric, for example it holds the potentials of employing thousands of Nigerians, but what is happening? We still import major food items like rice and other things instead of creating conducive environment for Agric. To thrive in this country, instead of being importer, we should be exporting. So, that is why we are condemning this thing. If there will be rebasing that will have bearing to the life styles of Nigerians in the way of improvement, then all of us will hail it and say that is very good, let keep on.
The issue of work place safety and health has not been really addressed in Nigeria, how should we approach this?
In the first place, it is very unfortunate even in a situation where you have many industrial workers. Every worker faces one hazard or the other but industrial workers face more hazards but unfortunately the industries keep shrinking. That is why we are talking about unemployment but if you look at the laws that are guiding the issue of safety, they have been very obsolete but at least to some extent, I will say there is light at the end of the tunnel. With the establishment of Nigeria Social Insurance Trust Fund (NSITF), there is light at the end of the tunnel but a lot of works have to be done. Yes, industries have to be parting with one per cent of their total salary payment to fund the scheme and in turn that fund will now ensure the compensation of those workers who might have been inflicted with injuries and so on in whatever form. But that is as far as also those who are already being affected. But the bulk of the challenges is to ensure safety in the workplace so that someone don’t even have to get injury or sick so as to be compensated. The most important thing is prevention. Like I said, most of the laws guiding this thing are obsolete and need to be looked into and to be reworked so that Nigerian workers will be seen to be safe. Most of our equipments in some of our industries are obsolete and there is need for the Ministry of Labour to intensify the supervisory roll it is expected to play in ensuring that even the equipment workers used are guarantee their safety. For example, I went to a printing press I saw the big machine that cut the papers. I saw one that they abandon, when I asked, they told me it is because of safety. That the other one they abandon had already cut a number of hands because with a little mistake it would come down and cut your hand but the new one they said you have to use two hands to operate it, if you use one hand it will not come down, so you must use two of your hands to avoid any accident. So that is one of the things that the Ministry of Labour through their Inspectorate Department has to be up and doing to make sure all equipment’s comply with international standard to prevent injuries at work place before even talking about compensation.
