The Senate Wednesday passed for second reading a bill to regulate and formalise employment of domestic workers, apprenticeship,interns and other informal sector employees in Nigeria.
The piece of legislation was sponsored by Senator Mohammed Sani Musa (APC Niger East).
In his lead debate on the bill, Senator Sani said it seeks to empower the National Directorate of Employment(NDE) to issue license and monitor privately owned agencies.
Sani said the operation in the informal sector was usually in small scale with labour intensive production and usually private ownership driven.
He added that participation of Nigerian economy by the informal sector showed evidence of violation of employee rights and non implementation of labour regulations .
“Informal sector in Nigeria has practice that are not in conformity to the International Labour Organisation(ILO)best practices as ratified in its convention,notwithstanding that Nigerian is signatory to this conventions.
“There are still a lot of deficits in its implementation of these conventions, one of such area of concern relates to decent work deficit,decent work is work with fair and equal treatments , decent remuneration, and fair condition of employment,safety and social protection, opportunities for training and collective bargaining.
“The primary role of the bill was to regulate the sector to promote strategic objectives, promotion of rights at work , employment , social protection and social dialogue,” he stressed.