The federal government yesterday unveiled a national policy on labour migration with the European Union saying that the country lacked adequate data on labour migration needed for strategic planning.
Minister of Labour and Employment Senator Chris Ngige, who unveiled the policy, said that the present administration valued its citizens and would not sit back and watch the depletion of its human resources, which is the most critical factor of production and national development.
The minister inaugurated two committees (Technical Working Committee and Social Partner Advisory Committee) to take charge of the full implementation of the policy, the first of its kind in Africa.
According to the minister, risk associated with irregular migration and its impact on Nigeria’s human resources and development necessitated the development of the labour migration policy aimed at promoting decent work and respectability of migrant workers.
He explained that the objective of the policy was to promote the good governance of labour migration, protect immigrant workers as well as their welfare and optimise the benefits of labour migration on development.
He stressed that the policy conferred Regular Immigrant Status on persons in their countries of destination, saying that the policy was developed with technical and financial support of International Organisation for Migration (IOM) and the International Labour Organisation (ILO).
Ngige maintained that the framework for achieving the implementation of the policy included “the establishment of job centres for the placement of job seekers into genuine vacancies, notified by employers from across the country and abroad”.
“Towards this end,” he said, “the Ministry of labour and Employment with technical and financial support from ILO, and IOM and funding from the European Development Fund equipped six functional job centres in Bauchi, Kaduna, Delta, Anambra and Abuja. The job centres provide the platform for matching demand and supply in the labour market.”
The minister added that Migrants Resource Centres (MRCs) for the provision of migration-related information has also been provided at two of the Job Centres in Lagos and Abuja.
Also speaking, the EU Deputy Head of Mission in Nigeria, Ms. Richard Young, said that the Nigerian government needed to establish a data base on labour migration, adding that, at the moment, the country lacked the needed data on labour migration needed for strategic planning.
She noted that Nigeria is one of the major countries with the highest earnings from labour migration in the sub-Sahara Africa and, as such, should take the issue of migration statistics serious.
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