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Tag: CISLAC

  • CISLAC urges World Bank to adopt standard

    CISLAC urges World Bank to adopt standard

    The Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre (CISLAC) has urged the World Bank to adopt a comprehensive labour standard lending requirement in its institutions. It said this is necessary because those adopted by other multilateral development banks to correct the major weaknesses in the draft labour safeguard that was recently issued for consultation were inadequate.

    Its Executive Director, Auwal Musa Rafsanjani who spoke in Lagos while reviewing the labour standard version proposed for those who work in bank-financed projects, stressed the need for the World Bank President, Jim Yong Kim, to ensure that the proposal would be to all good intents and purposes and not exist only on paper.

    According to the CISLAC boss, an important feature of all the other banks’ labour safeguards in the past has been their application to contractors and sub-contractors, thus ensuring coverage of a category of workers that are highly vulnerable to exploitation and abuse.

    He emphasised that the major weakness of the World Bank’s draft labour safeguard is the proposal that the International Labour Organisation (ILO’s) core labour standards should only be fully complied with if they are incorporated in national law.

    “Specifically, the freedom of association and right to collective bargaining provisions would apply only where national law recognises them, thus opening the door to retaliatory measures by project managers against workers who wish to exercise those rights.

    “We fully hope and expect that the World Bank will catch up to the labour standards provisions adopted by the other development finance institutions over the past several years, and not undermine the progress that has been made by adopting a labour safeguard that is full of exemptions and exclusions,” he said.

  • NEITI plans forum on metering for crude oil

    A forum to dialogue on the installation of metering infrastructure to adequately measure the quality of crude produced in Nigeria will hold in the first quarter of 2014.

    In a statement issued yesterday by its Director of Communications of the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI), Dr Orji Ogbonnaya Orji, in Abuja, it said the debate on the possibility of embracing a metering system to accurately measure the quality of crude produced has remained a major issue in NEITI oil and gas industry reports.

    The statement added that the Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre (CISLAC) had proposed to collaborate with NEITI to organise the policy dialogue.

    It said the proposed dialogue would assemble individuals and stakeholders knowledgeable on the issue of metering and what is obtainable in the country.

    “The participants will appraise the status quo, its challenges and the cost to the nation, implication for the sector and the constraints for remediation.

    “It will also recommended actionable strategies for implementing a remediation action plan on metering that the in-coming Inter-ministerial Task Team can implement.’’

    The statement said the programme became necessary because the country depend largely on the International Oil Companies (IOCs) to determine the volume of resources extracted and exported.

    “Several components of government take and revenue is dependent on volume and so the accuracy of this substantially determines revenue.

    “Considering the non-renewable nature of oil and gas and the need to maximise revenues and government take, reliance on IOCs for volumes places the nation at a disadvantage as under-disclosure of volume works in their favour,’’ it said.

    The statement also said a Roundtable for Civil Society Organisation originally scheduled to hold on Tuesday and Wednesday next week has been shifted to December 16 and 17.

    Others are the Forum put in place in partnership with the Revenue Watch Institute to review the findings and recommendations on various NEITI independent audit reports earlier slated for this week.

    The forum, which will now hold in the first quarter of next year, will among other things, examine the NEITI oil and gas audit reports, covering 1999 to 2011 and the Nuhu Ribadu-Petroleum Revenue Special Task Force report.

    Also to be examined are the report on the KPMG audit of NNPC, the Kalu Idika Kalu reports on refineries and the House of Representatives Ad Hoc Committee report on fuel subsidy (2009-2011).

    Others are the Magnus Abe-led Senate Joint Committee on Petroleum Resources (2005-2011) and the Aig-Imoukhuede-led Technical Committee on Subsidy Claims and Payments.

     

  • Group urges govt to prioritise job creation

    The Civil Society Legislative Advocacy (CISLAC) has called on the Federal Government to make job creation a priority, adding that recent global ranking has Nigeria as one of the countries with the highest number of unemployment.

    CISLAC’s Executive Director, Auwal Musa Rafsanjani in an interactive session with reporters in Lagos also called on governors and local government chairmen to take job creation serious.

    He said: “We are worried and therefore call on the Federal Government to take the issue of job creation a priority because the recent Global Index on Modern Slavery for 2013 showed that there are 701,032 estimated population in modern slavery in Nigeria and that the range of the estimate spans from 670,000 to 740,000 slaves in the country.”

    According to Rafsanjani, the report also showed that the scourge of human trafficking and forced prostitution have become a profitable enterprise as payment of slave wage has become ranpant.

    He said with the refusal of some employers of labour, especially some governors, to pay the N18,000 minimum wage, workers no longer own the means of production and are forced to sell their labour cheaply because of the quest to survive.

    CISLAC said the International Labour Organisation (ILO) estimates that almost 21 million people are victims of forced labour.

    It said: “Today some people are still being born into hereditary slavery, a staggering but harsh reality, particularly in parts of West Africa as shown in the report.

    “Other victims are captured or kidnapped before being sold or kept for exploitation, either through ‘marriage’, unpaid labour on fishing boats, or as domestic workers. Others are tricked or lured into situations they cannot escape, with false promises of a good job or education.”

    President, Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Comrade Abdulwahed Ibrahim Omar has also called for mass mobilisation of Africans to activate and set in motion the final process for the final independence for the Saharawi people, stressing that Western Sahara remains the only colony in Africa, not under the boots of a European power, but under the yoke of a sister African country, Morocco, itself an ex-colony.

  • Experts mull transparency in extractive industry

    Experts mull transparency in extractive industry

    WORRIED by the deepening level of corruption in the extractive industry in sub-Sahara Africa, a cross-section of experts have set machinery in motion to address the ugly trend.

    One group in the vanguard of this initiative is the Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre (CISLAC), a nongovernment, nonprofit organisation, with collaboration with other stakeholders.

    The organisation which facilitated an interface and discussion forum tagged: ‘CSO Engagement of the NEITI Process in Nigeria: The CISLAC Experience’, in Lome, capital of Benin, recently, engaged critical stakeholders in the extractive industry, pointing out to them why they must all join hands  together to promote transparency in the sector.

    Mr. Hashimu Salaudeen, who was CISLAC Head of delegation at the Benin Republic advocacy trip which included investor, parliamentarian, civil societies and regulators, recalled how the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative policy came to be, its implementation in Nigeria, what the scenario was before the implementation and what it is now after the adoption of the EITI policy.

    He also spoke on the need for Benin to quickly embrace the EITI policy because the francophone countries are still at the formative process of going into full natural resources extraction, especially crude oil. This to him will help the country avoid some of the potholes Nigeria fell into.

    Painting the Nigeria scenario, he noted that Nigeria is a country with rich natural resources though at present depends on oil and gas as its main source of revenue. He observed that the sector was opaque and riddled with corruption as its activities and revenue was known only by a few government officials and oil firms, which made even called for accountability cumbersome.

    He however said that with the origin of the EITI in 2002 and Publish What You Pay movement, demands, especially by civil societies, for openness and transparency increased globally and Nigeria was not left out.

    A parliamentarian, Hon. Adam Bi, in one of the meetings, commended the initiative as it is good for his country to have an insight into what other countries especially Nigeria has gone through as it would be a good guide for Benin and a rich experience to learn from.

    He also stated that the advocacy trip is also good for his country to have an insight to the transparency issues before his country starts exploration.

    Mr. Awo Marcel a staff of the Ministry of Petroleum research and Mines, after listening to the presentation said that Benin is ready and interested to put in place the necessary steps to implement the EITI benchmark through a cross-ministerial concept including organising workshop across ministry for better understanding and appreciation of the issues.

    During the advocacy with civil society groups, Mr. Roger Kpokpo, of Global Aids, said that the insight provided by CISLA representative has helped to expand his knowledge base on the need to ensure accountability in the extractive industry and why all stakeholders must be involved.

    For Mr. Gandaho Ramleg, though there is a law in place, it did not clearly state the sharing of the revenue to positively affect the host communities.

    He however fears that there is danger because the seeming peace in his country is a product of pathological silence of the citizens to what is going on in the country, which could change when Benin begins full exploration of crude oil.

    A representative of Gender for Development Action (GADA) Miss Obiageli Ukeoma, after listening to some of issues raised by the stakeholders during the discussions, commended the stakeholders for wanting to ensure transparency in the extractive sector. She urged the stakeholders to work towards having a law in place even before companies that would be involved in the extractive industries starts operation.