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The Minister of Labour and Employment, Festus Keyamo (SAN) has tasked the newly appointed Director General (DG) of Micheal Imoudu Institute for Labour Studies (MINILS) and other management of the institution to give new life to the institution in order to be able to discharge its responsibilities.
The minister tasked the management during 2 days official visit to the Labour Institute, located in Ilorin, Kwara state on Friday said “upon my assumption of office as Minister, President gave me this institute as one of the agency to supervise, and I was surprised to hear that, in recent time no minister has visited here and I was wonder why, so I decided to break that jinx and come and see things by myself, and interact with management and staff”
“This visit, is to encourage my friend, comrade Issa Aremu mni, who is their new DG, and I so much believe that it would also boost their morale and give me opportunity to hear from the workers, what must have been the problem of this institution, why there have been some kind of lack of progress here for sometimes and what we can do to improve the situation and I hope that after my visit, things are going to be improved a lot here” Keyamo said
The minister also disclosed that the Federal Government was considering tinkering with all the labour laws in the country with a view to making them more effective and efficient.
Said “Some labour centres are not represented in the governing council of the institute, so we are trying to amend all the labour laws in the country. We are going to amend that of this institute so that all the labour centres will be represented”
“The MINILS law was an old one. It was a decree that was adopted later as an act of the parliament. At that time, Trade Union Congress (TUC) was not in existence. We are not unmindful of the lack of balance in the constitution of the Governing Council.”
Keyamo also expressed government determination to ensure that right people are always picked to head government institutions such as MINILS, said personalities make institutions.
“I agree with the notion of building strong institutions, but I want to say that personalities also make institutions, hence the best decision I made was recommending Comrade Issa Aremu to head this place,” he said.
In a similar development, Minister for Labour and Employment, Keyamo also lauded Kwara state Governor, AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq during courtesy visit to the Governor at the Government house said “I want to make bold to say that this present Kwara Government is more labour friendly in terms of labour relation. Kwara is one of the most labour friendly states in the whole country that is why we are very comfortable and we are at home being here”
“We see how government-labour relations have deteriorated in most parts of this country especially with many state governments and it has led to problems in those states. Thank God we have not witnessed that in Kwara State. So, we appeal to you to take full advantage of MINILS and engage your workers in their programmes,” he said.
Governor AbdulRazaq, for his part, commended the Labour unions for their support and understanding and called for changing of the Michael Imoudu National Institute for Labour Studies to Michael Imoudu University for Labour Studies.
“During your tenure, we seek the change of that institute to Michael Imoudu University for Labour Studies. The reason for that is that the infrastructure is there. Most of the new universities we have today don’t have infrastructure in that institute. It will be one of your achievements in office. Most of our universities take years to put infrastructure in place but the Institute has crossed that hurdles already. That is one legacy that we will say you have achieved as a minister,” AbdulRazaq said.
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