By Joan Nwagwu
The International Labour Organisation (ILO) says outgoing and incoming migrants are increasing within the Nigerian borders.
The ILO Senior Technical Specialist on Workers’ Activities, Abuja Office, Inviolata Chinyangarara, made this known at a two-day consultative workshop on Tuesday in Abuja.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the workshop was organised to define a roadmap for the development of a Trade Union Labour Migration Policy.
According to Chinyangarara, counting labour migration trends figures is a challenge because migration can be regular or irregular.
“Some coming in are counted because they come through regular process, airports and other ports of entries but the majority that are vulnerable that in precarious situation are those that are coming through irregular means.
“But ILO statistics also show that they the trends are increasing, that is outgoing and incoming migrants, particularly within the Nigerian borders,’’ she said.
She said that labour migration were triggered by social, political and economic issues such as climate induces on labour migration, disasters, pandemics and other crisis, trigger people to move.
According to her, our statistics also shows that largely in Africa, people are moving for economic reasons, particularly the young men and women.
“When they find that there are no jobs, no prospects for livelihood, they are pushed to move to other countries where they can find greener pastures for employment or enterprise development,’’ she said.
She however noted that the sectors highly hit by migration include health and construction sectors, cross borders traders and domestic service sectors “are highly mobile’’.
She said that there was brain-drain of highly skilled medical personnel, others, leaving the shores African countries to get better jobs in neighbouring countries.
“That is why the ILO has come up with a global International Standards that is protecting and promoting the rights domestic workers, that is Convention 189,’’ she said.
Chinyangarara said that ILO was collaborating with the tripartite constituency in Nigeria on issues of decent work and particularly on labour migration governance, to ensure the promotion of rights of migrants, among others.
According to her, this is to brainstorm around a roadmap for the developing a Trade Union Labour Migration Policy, understand that in 2014, the Ministry of Labour spearheaded the process to develop the policy.
“So, leveraging on that the trade unions are also going to brainstorm on this workshop some of this national frameworks including global frameworks such as the agenda 2030 for sustainable development.
“We are also going to look at the ECOWAS Protocol on Movement of Goods and Persons, we also going to look at relevant ILO International Labour Standards.
“It is some of these documents that would then inspire the content in the process for developing the Trade Union Labour Migration Policy.
“We are going to look at what is going to change in the process of the review and what are the new antics that COVID-19 pandemic, others has brought to bear,’’ she said.
Chinyangarara said that the Trade Union Labour Migration Policy was one way that the trade unions would contribute to the implementation of the national Labour Migration Policy.
She said that a Trade Union Labour Migration Policy is a partway for trade unions to contributes to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that were targeting labour migration.
She said that the Labour Migrations Policy had become imperative as migration had become a major challenge in Africa for young men and women as they travelled through irregular processes.
“After this workshop, we are hoping to come up with a process that will then define the milestones for Labour Migrations Policy.
“We hope to come up with a steering committee that will be made up from NLC, TUC that will then define if they want to do development of Labour Migration Policy.
“That is through consulting or on their own in-housing knowledge expertise to develop this process, ’’she said.
NLC Migration Officer James Eustace said the workshop was first of its kind to design a roadmap policy on Trade Union Labour Migration.
Eustace said that there were two policies that were already frameworks for migration governance in Nigeria, which include the National Policy on Labour Migration adopted by the Federal Executive Council in 2014 and the National Migration Policy adopted in 2015.
“These are all state actors policies, but for us it is a clear fact migration is merely driven by employment and labour migrants, forming the bulk of migrants.
“Therefore it is very critical and necessary for trade unions to have a framework that guides trade unions activities in migration governance, hence the decision to hold the workshop,’’ he said. (NAN)
