Confab: FG to stop paying absentee delegates’ allowance

The Federal Regime has threatened not to pay the delegates at the national conference who reluct to attend plenary.

This message was relayed by the conference management to the delegates during their sitting on Thursday.

After the presentation of the report of the Committee on Civil Society, Labour, Youths and Sports by its Chairman, Mrs. Bola Ogunrinde, the Chairman of the conference, Justice Idris Kutigi asked his deputy, Prof. Bolaji Akinyemi to relay a consequential message to the delegates.

Akinyemi verbally expressed it was conspicuous that delegates might not  like what he was going to verbalize, but asked them to understand that there was no way regime would be jubilant to realize that delegates were customarily absent during debates.

He verbalized since the sittings were customarily live on television stations, the delegates should withal ken that regime officials had been visually examining and descrying that seats were customarily vacuous.

Akniyemi, a former minister of external affairs, verbalized delegates should additionally ken that allowance being paid to them was tied to sitting.

He verbalized, “Government is apprehensive that 50 per cent of the delegates don’t emerge for debate. It is shown live and this is not good.

“They (Regime officials) are now reminding us that there are regime rules that when we are being paid sitting allowance, it must be visually perceived to be so.

“Because of his, we may not pay allowance to delegates that don’t emerge. We want you to ken this because we are all adults and we must be visually perceived to be responsible.

“We don’t want to be treating delegates as secondary school pupils. As from Monday, delegates who don’t emerge will not be paid sitting allowance unless on medical reasons, which must have the sanction of the chairman, who must have been apprised. I hope I have  not disconcerted you.”

The delegates clapped in accedence.

It would be recalled that on Wednesday, the plenary was hurriedly suspended for 30 minutes in the morning due to the inability of the conference to meet quorum.

Meanwhile, the committee on Civil Society, Labour, Youths and Sports has verbalized that strike is a legitimate designates by workers to enforce their rights.

The committee, in its recommendations, therefore verbally expressed that no endeavor should be made to gainsay workers the right to withal unionise.

It verbalized, “No endeavor should be made to gainsay workers the right of unionization. Strikes are legitimate instruments of enforcing workers rightists and negotiations within the framework of collective bargaining.

“The Pan-National Character of Labour Unions which has played a paramount role in national development should not be compromised by balkanizing labour and trade unionism. Labour and unionism should perpetuate to be on the Exclusive List.

The Minimum Wage, as currently provided for in the Constitution should remain on the Exclusive List.

“All stakeholders, including state regimes should avail themselves of tripartite framework for determining the minimum wage to ascertain ownership and acceptability.”

On the indispensable one year accommodation for the NYSC, the committee recommended that the scheme should be repositioned for pertinent youth empowerment.

It proposed that one year time tenure should be split in three phases of one month of primary assignment, six months of integration industrial exposure and five months of vocational and entrepreneurial skills acquisition