…Wants Strict Domestication of C190 Nationwide

INNOCENT OWEH ABUJA

The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and Trade Union Congress (TUC) as well as stakeholders drawn from the civil society organisations have called on government to ensure strict domestication of the Convention 190, which seeks to eliminate all forms of harassment and violence against the workforce.

Recall that the International Labour Organisations in Geneva ratified the Convention 190 with many nations around the world domesticating it.

The law exists to eliminate all forms of violence against workers, especially females as well as protect workers from discrimination and harassment.

To this end, the Solidarity Center in collaboration with the Trade Unions( NLC and TUC) and other relevant affiliates held a 2-day meeting to review the C190 implementation.

Stakeholders who attended the meeting took out time to strategize, develop plans, and identify key players for the implementation of the C190 in Nigeria.

It provided a space for the alliance of Trade Unions to emerge, ensuring that identified next steps, and best practices are discussed and agreed upon, building a critical mass of actors of the course.

A participant at the workshop, Comrade Roselyn Uba, a member of the National Administrative Council of NLC said since the ratification of C190 at Geneva and domestication by the Nigerian government recently, not much work has been done in terms of implementation.

According to Roselyn that accounted for the workshop to map out strategies and to identify stakeholders to carry out the implementation of the C190.

Her words, “We want to see it work, we want to see it practicalised, to see that our courts, lawyers and judges use it as a reference in the implementation of justice.

“When you talk of harassment, we are talking of harassment at the workplace, cases of harassment to the NLC have not really been that much because most victims hardly come up because they don’t like speaking out, especially for fear of stigmatisation, fear of losing their jobs, that is why most times they don’t come out to report these cases. But we want a situation, where whether you report or not the C190 will come into implementation and the victims or survivors as we call them will get justice.

“That is why this workshop is being held so that we identify stakeholders, where they can easily go and have a heart to heart talk, where nobody will discriminate against them and where they can be free to open up and report these cases”.

Corroborating Roselyn’s position, another participant, Vanessa Edebru from the Solidarity Centre and Gender Specialist, said over 80 percent of the workforce faces one form of violence or harassment at their places of work.

She said, “This C190 report analysis meeting was designed for relevant stakeholders in the trade unions to sit and discuss strategies, identify relevant stakeholders to engage the C190 that it may be implemented in Nigeria.

“The law has been ratified as we all know, over 40 countries in the world have ratified this report treaty, but the next step is to just have it become a live document that is being used and pretty much what the C190 is developed for the workers well-being, where workers can have a place of work that is free of all forms of violence and harassment.

“The world over, there are alarming statistics that do say that people experience different form of workplace harassment. The world of work is described as from when you begin to get ready to go to work and when you get there and in the course of work, so you can imagine the statistics that we have.

“For Nigeria, particularly in our own context there was a research that was done by the NLC in collaboration with the solidarity centre in 2021 and it showed that huge amount of workers within the different sectors within the country experience violence and harassment I cannot give you all the details of the data, but I can tell you over 80 percent of workers may have experienced one form of violence or harassment within the world of work”.