NECA, labour disagree on privatisation

 THE  PUNCH.

Employers in the private sector, under the aegis of the Nigerian Employers’ Consultative Association, have advised the Federal Government to privatise corporate organisations belonging to it and being run for profit in order to pave the way for development.

Speaking at the 58th Annual General Meeting of the association, the President, NECA, Mr. Larry Ettah, said privatisation, free enterprise and the private sector should be allowed to drive the developmental plan of the country.

According to him, the government should restrict its role to providing an enabling environment for the private sector as it is being done all over the world.

Ettah suggested that every government commercial institution that had not been privatised should be considered for the exercise, adding that the proposed privatisation of the railway was a welcome initiative.

“I feel happy to hear that government is contemplating the privatisation of our national railway system. The British did it under the government of Margaret Thatcher and they are better for it. That is surely the direction to go. We may, indeed, consider the airports as well for private sector management once appropriate security oversight can be maintained by the government,” he added.

However, the President, Nigeria Labour Congress, Wabba Ayuba, who was represented by the first Deputy-President, Peters Adeyemi, condemned the privatisation of public enterprises as a result of the notion that the government could not manage them.

He called for the reversal of the power sector privatisation because electricity generation had not improved since private investors took over the power assets.

Ayuba said, “Public enterprises are given out under the guise of being unprofitable, inefficient, unmanageable, wasteful or that the government must not be involved in business.

“These are mere excuses for a policy imposed on our country to stop funding public interests with public money.

 Our taxes are meant to provide us good services, qualitative lives and infrastructure. They are not contributions for individuals. The government must reverse some of the sales of public enterprises, including the power sector, which despite its privatisation, has sunk further into comatose.”

Speaking further, Ettah urged the government to put an end to the subsidy payment payments on refined petroleum products and deregulate the downstream sector of the petroleum industry to encourage the establishment of private sector-owned refineries.

He enjoined the government to engage the organised private sector, especially business management organisations such as NECA, the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria, Nigerian Economic Summit Group and National Association of Small Scale Industrialists in dialogue on key issues affecting the economy.

“We recommend, as a matter of urgency, a reform agenda that should start with the convocation of a tripartite forum that will take ownership of the agenda and enthrone a system that will ensure decency, orderliness, industrial harmony adherence to the rule of law, justice and equity and enhancement of national productivity,” Ettah added.

The International Labour Organisation Country Representative, Mr. Dennis Zulu, observed that employers in countries all over the world were embracing flexibility in the labour market as a means of creating jobs, adding that employers who wished to adopt outsourcing and subcontracting should not only protect their own interest, but the employees’ as well.

In order to create sustainable jobs, he enjoined employers to adopt new technologies that would make work processes easier, adding that the country needed to utilise renewable sources of energy to generate power.