Ndubuisi Orji, Abuja
The House of Representatives on Tuesday, passed for second reading a bill seeking to criminalise causalisation and outsourcing of jobs in the country.
The bill which seeks to amend the Labour Act, if passed into law will prohibit and criminalise causalisation of workers after six months of engagement by employers in the country and outsourcing of jobs was sponsored by Wale Raji.
According to the bill, a violation of proposed law will attract a fine not exceeding N2 million or an imprisonment for a period of two years, or both, in the case of a “natural ” individual, while the case of a corporate body, there shall be a fine not exceeding N2million or imprisonment for a period of two years, for each director of the company.
Raji, in his lead debate, accused multinational companies operating in the telecom and oil and gas sectors of contributing to the economic crisis in the country by outsourcing jobs in their core mandate areas, even when such jobs can be handled by Nigerians.
The lawmaker stated that the bill seeks to prohibit outsourcing of jobs, which Nigerians can perform, to nationals of other countries, as well as to make it mandatory for the regularisation of a worker’s employment after six months of their engagement.
According to him, the proposed “amendment is intended to abolish the obnoxious practice of casualisation of a worker’s employment by creating a new section which provides that an employer has a period of not less than six months of engaging a worker to regularise his appointment as a full and permanent staff.
“It also provides that in the event of disengagement of a worker after a period of six months from the date of first engagement without regularisation, the worker shall be entitled to full salary, allowance and other benefits due to a permanent staff upon disengagement, provided that the worker has not been found liable of a criminal act involving fraud resulting in financial loss to the company.
“Upon the breach of the above provision, the proposed section 8(3) paragraph (a-b) provides the punishment for a natural person and corporate bodies respectively.”