Bimbola Oyesola, Geneva, Switzerland
Nigeria has called on African leaders to emulate the campaign for common minimum wage across Europe as expressed by the French President, Emmanuel Macron at the ongoing International Labour Conference (ILC).
This was even as it solicited support for the adoption of an African language as one of the languages of communication at the International Labour Congress (ILO).
President of the Trade Union Congress (TUC) ,Comrade Bobboi Bala Kaigama, said it is important for African countries to emulate the new way being proposed by the European countries.
”This is a new strategy for trying to see how Europeans can improve working conditions of their workers”, he said.
Kaigama noted that some African leaders has addressed the plenary on the various issues in the history of ILO, issues relating to decent work, child labour, labour abuses, issues of human trafficking, issues of fundamental human right, particularly issues of observing labour standard across the global, adding that it has been a rewarding experience .
“Our members have been spread across various committee of the ILC, we strongly believe that at the end of the day, Nigeria will be better for it particularly the labour movement because it has given us a lot of opportunities to train ourselves, to do researches, to interact with our colleagues in other countries,“ he stated
On the issues of language, Kaigama said he supported the call for an African language to be part of languages recognize by the ILO and also allowed it to be interpreted at the ILO programme.
He explained that the employers representative who incidentally happened to be an African made the observation at the Plenary while making his presentation.
“He lamented that the ILO arrangement in a way has no single African language recognised by the global body to be interpreted during Plenary whereas there are others like, Portuguese, French, English, Spanish, Russian, Arabic etc.
The employer spokesperson actually demanded that the case must be looked into by the global body.
“I think am impressed by that and I believe that ILO will make necessary amend because Africa is a big continent and has indeed contributed tremendously to the development of the ILO,” Kaigama said.