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Prioritise Workers’ Welfare, Poverty Alleviation – NLC Urges 8th Assembly

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NAN – Mr Peter Ozo-Eson, General Secretary, Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) on Tuesday urged the newly inaugurated National Assembly to prioritise legislation on policies that would promote inclusive growth, create jobs and reduce mass poverty.

Ozo-Eson, the General Secretary of the Congress gave this advice in a phone interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos.

He said that the newly elected Senate President, Dr Bukola Saraki and the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Mr Yakubu Dogara, should focus on improved welfare for Nigerians workers and masses.

“Honestly, for us, the agenda for workers’ welfare should be a priority. We have several states, several agencies that are owing arrears of workers’ salaries.

“As they settle down to business, this needs to be visited very quickly and whatever the reason, it should be resolved so that workers get their full entitlements up to date.

“They need to manage the economy in a way that would promote workers’ welfare, create jobs and move the economy in a direction that will be development oriented so that workers can benefit from that process.

“They need to put policies in place that will ensure we move in a different direction, we will have developmental growth that will create jobs and growth that will be inclusive,” he said.

According to him, the National Assembly should work hard to bridge the gap between the rich and the poor.

The scribe, however, said that the pattern of elections into the leadership positions of the two chambers that brought Saraki and Dogara suggested that the new government was starting the process with crises.

“The circumstances that led to the election of Saraki as the Senate President appears that we are starting the whole process with a crisis.

“Only some of the senators converged and elected him.

“Of course, it is the Senate that has the authority to choose it own leadership, but that should be done in a democratic, transparent open way without bringing the Senate into different groupings from the beginning.

“It does not seem to have met the test of everybody participating in the process,” he said.

NAN reports that Saraki went against the position of his party, the All Progressives Congress, to emerge the Senate President.

The party had preferred the choice of Sen. Ahmed Lawan for the position.

At the House of Representatives, the APC’s preferred candidate, Mr Femi Gbajabiamila, also lost to Dogara, who became Speaker.

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