…says we resolved 1,425 labour disputes in 3 years
The Minister of Labour and Employment, Sen. Chris Ngige, has accused the National Assembly of distorting and inserting what he described as ‘questionable projects’ under the guise of constituency projects in the ministry’s budgets for the past three years. He disclosed that of late some Chief Executive Officers of the parastatals in the ministry were engaging in the act of conniving with lawmakers to disrupt already agreed budgets especially those they had defended in their respective Ministries. Ngige, who made the accusations while delivering his valedictory address on Monday in Abuja, lamented that the money which was sliced off from the aggregate allocation to main Ministries and their parastatals to create new and in many cases, projects and programmes unrelated to core mandate of the ministry/ parastatal, had greatly affected the performance of the ministry during the years under review. “All is not well with our budgetary system. In our 2016, 2017 and 2018 budgets, there were distortions and insertions under the guise of constituency projects that greatly affected the performance of our programmes and projects. There is a great difference between the zonal intervention constituency projects from the N100 billion offered to the National Assembly by the Executive in her proposal.
“This is clearly not in consonance with the spirit of Section 80 of the constitution for which the authors of the constitution gave powers to the elected representatives of the people to look at the budgets, which when presented by the Executives, still remains an executive work proposal. Therefore, let the NASS consult the Executive via robust defense sessions in order to allow the Executive to do its own work unfettered. “It is completely incongrous and serious act of indiscipline against the Public Service Rules (PSR) for Heads of Treasury and Non-Treasury funded parastatals to surreptitiously visit law makers to suggest to them or connive with them to disrupt already agreed budgets especially those they had defended in their respective Ministries. Some Chief Executive Officers of the parastatals in the ministry had lately engaged in this act and should retrace their steps as we move to the next level.
“Budget funding up to 100 per cent should also be the target of government as anything less than 75 per cent distorts programmes and projects execution, making for late completion and in some cases abandonment of the projects in subsequent Budget cycles,” he said. The minister, who noted there has been a huge improvement in the ministry’s budget, explained that from a 2015 budget that had only N200 million for capital vote, out of which about N60 million was for Constituency Empowerment Projects, spiraling into April, 2016 for the main Ministry to the phenomenal increase of both recurrent and capital budget to N11 billion in 2016 and N12 billion in 2017 and 2018 respectively. Ngige further disclosed that within his tenure as minister, 1,425 trade disputes and complaints have been received, 788 disputes completely concluded and resolved, 37 cases referred to Industrial Arbitration Panel (IAP), and 600 pending at various stages of mediation and conciliation. While noting that the
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