New ILO Country Director meets NLC, promises ILO’s collaboration with partners in Nigeria

The new ILO Director for Nigeria, Ghana, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Liaison Office for ECOWAS, Vanessa Phala, met with the leadership of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) with a promise to collaborate with ILO’s constituent partners in Nigeria.

“I think the expectation for an ILO is to forge ahead and to sustain and to really collaborate and work together with our constituent partners in Nigeria,” she said during the parley with the congress.

According to her, there is already a lot of works that the ILO has been doing with its constituents and specifically with the NLC.

She said: “The President (NLC President) mentioned and touched on a number of initiatives that we would implement jointly and of course there is an opportunity for further collaboration on many other areas of common interest, particularly as we are pursuing a journey in achieving the Decent Work Agenda for Nigeria.”

On the issue of child labour, she said, “Child labour remains an important issue for the ILO. If you are aware, ILO and UNICEF released global estimates on child labour this year, and the indication is that the number of under-aged children who are working is going up for Africa.

“This is a priority and hence, we have a dedicated project that we are implementing in Nigeria, that is aimed to addressing the issues of child labour. We can’t have children working, we need to have children who are in school so that they can contribute to the economic growth and development of Nigeria.”

She pointed out that the ILO was equally working with Nigeria on the issue of migration. Most importantly, the ILO Country Director stated that in particular, the ILO was working on a process against the ratification of the Labour Migration, “to provide all the necessary technical support to make sure that the legislative environment is conducive to be able to address issues of fundamental interest for Nigeria and ILO.

On the specific areas of support, she said: “We support in different areas of technical assistance, in capacity building. Actually, right now in Abuja, my colleagues were in a training workshop but that really speaks to the issue of recruitment in labour migration, and the meeting includes representatives of the Ministry of Labour and Employment, representatives of NECA, and also representatives of private employment agencies.

“So, of course, it’s a collaborative effort, and the role of the ILO is very key in those processes in terms of the technical expertise that we are bringing, but also with a lot of expertise and wealth in the areas that we have covered through capacity building tools and instruments that we have developed over the years.”