Africa
THE Federation of Informal Workers of Nigeria (FIWON) says it’s intensifying campaigns for governments to provide the right environment for people to work and thrive.
Its General Secretary, Mr Gbenga Komolafe disclosed this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Thursday in Lagos.
Komolafe said the campaign became necessary as it was prompted by an extremely challenging 2023 where the macroeconomic situation was just getting a little bit stabilised.
According to him, this is just after the devastating impacts of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic and the associated measures taken to contain it, especially the lockdowns.
“A lot of micro businesses had lost their working capital during that period and were just trying to find their feet again when the tumultuous policy twists of 2023 started to unravel.
“First, we had the currency redesign brouhaha, which suddenly mopped off paper currency from the economy while encouraging e-transactions.
“The situation again, resulted in many micro businesses suffering massive decline while unemployment, and precarious employment soared further.
“The cost of fuel rose sharply by over 300 per cent; prices of food and the most basic goods have soared and keep rising almost on a daily basis.
“In this situation, poor working people in the informal economy are simply managing to survive as feeding, housing, transportation, and healthcare become unaffordable for most working families,“ he said.
The labour leader, therefore, called for government’s economic policy fundamentals to be redefined.
He urged governments at all levels to redesign the social safety nets programme by making the organisations of working people in the informal economy an integral part of the policy.
“Informal workers’ organisations and other grassroots organisations should be at the centre of distribution of palliative and social funds as they know their members.
“Also, it is certain that once the members are aware of what has been given out to their organisations, the leaders will have no rest until everything has been transparently disbursed.
“Technology can easily be deployed to make the entire process of funds allocation and disbursement very transparent and available to any member of the public to access information about specific allocations, the disbursement, and the beneficiaries.
“Only this type of transparency can arrest the incessant challenge of stealing these types of social funds, thereby aggravating inequality and social discontent, “ Komolafe said. (NAN)
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-January 25, 2024 @ 10:15 GMT|
Tags: FIWON Mr Gbenga Komolafe
