Ugandan varsity wants Nigerian TAC volunteers

Ugandan varsity wants Nigerian TAC volunteers
From Oghogho Obayuwana, Abuja

THE Technical Aids Corps (TAC) programme, Nigeria’s window for the export of expertise to countries mostly in the southern hemisphere has yet another request laid on its table: A Ugandan university wants some Nigerian engineers.

Visiting Vice Chancellor of the Ndejje University, Uganda, Bishop Michael Senyimba, who is leading a delegation of the university’s council to Nigeria, made the request in Abuja during a parley with officials of TAC.

Although the request may not be met by the current biennial posting arrangement of TAC, the chief executive officer of the programme, Ambassador Mamman Daura, said at the weekend that Nigeria had had to struggle to meet most requests of late.

But he noted that Nigeria was now very near to tapping from the experience that returnee volunteers are expected to bring back into the economy.

Oil and gas have just been discovered in the east African country. Ndejje University is a new and promising institution that currently has no engineering faculty.

“This is the reason why we are in Nigeria. We have now made an official request to your technical aids programme. We have seen what other countries are benefitting from this initiative which is very unique in Africa. With the working understanding which we now have, as we prepare to open our engineering faculty, we have made our approach. We want to train our own experts in this field with TAC trainers. In Nigeria, we are also visiting some other universities. We recognise that exchange is key in today’s technology-driven world,” Senyimba stressed.

On why the Ugandans are looking the way of Nigeria in this regard, he said: “Well, as a new university which is in need of engineering manpower and that is establishing faculty of engineering and Uganda is at the beginning of oil finds, Nigeria is the natural point of call. It is a country that has experience in the oil industry. And I am happy to disclose to you that our contact here (TAC) looks very promising and fruitful.”

Speaking shortly after the roundtable exchange of papers of intent where various technical and general questions were fielded by the Ugandan delegation from the TAC team, Daura noted that TAC was being put in the limelight for the right reason.

“I feel satisfied that the programme is positively accepted outside Nigeria. That goes to show how effective our programme is, how much it is helping these countries to develop their social and economic infrastructure and how much it will in the end help Nigeria in gaining expertise. Yes, more of such requests are expected. And the cause of the South-South cooperation is being helped in no small measure,” he added.

The Ndejje University is owned by six dioceses of the Anglican Church in Uganda. The country’s foreign ministry had written its Nigerian counterpart asking for TAC volunteers in the engineering field.

In the end, it is the receiving countries, which determine the number and the qualifications of the volunteers. The next TAC biennium begins from 2010 through 2012.

source: click here

re – NLC tackles foreign firm for hiring expatriate welders

Sometime three years ago, my field work requirement necessitated that I visit a customer site located in Port Harcourt City. All along, I thought that the site was ‘residential’, not in a company/manufacturing setting. From the airport, my contact person picked me up and in about an-hour we were at the site. The most surprising thing about my trip was that I saw a lot of foreign expatriates working as welders, metal benders, manufacturing chains(like the one on the left). The sight was stinging, surprising and shameful.

About 45-minutes after we arrived at the site, t’was lunchtime. A company bus soon arrived and all the expatriates(men and women) entered and went for lunch.

I thought: ’so all these foreign men and women were issued working visas, entered planes bound for Nigeria from their respective countries, and are working as chain-welders here?’

If they were engaged in more complex tasks, I wouldn’t have complained, but seeing they were mere welders just put me off. I was at the site for 4-days. One of their foreign supervisors whom I made friends told me his name was Igor and he has been working in Nigeria for 6-years as a welder. I could just do the mathematics of about over 50-expatriates I saw. I had to ask questions and when I found time, I did. I asked my hosts why foreigners were employed as welders for the simplest of welding tasks (a chain), when a whole lot of jobless Nigerians who could be trained, could be paid cheaper and would do better jobs, with even more commitment are walking the streets. He replied: “ah my brother, its a foreign owned company o, so they decide who to employ.” I went around the entire premises of that company and I did not see them doing anything else. They were just welding chains of different shapes and sizes, and packaging them into crates.

I asked my host of it was possible for Nigerians to be exported to foreign countries to work as chain welders in a Nigerian owned company over there, without that other government laying down rules on the kind of professional skill the Nigerian expatriates must possess before being issued working permits. Reciprocity was all that was on my mind.

I read the article below on todays issue of the Nigerian Guardian Newspapers and I remembered my experience above.

NLC tackles foreign firm for hiring expatriate welders
From Willie Etim (Yenagoa)

THE Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) in Bayelsa State has flayed the hiring of expatriate welders and fitters by the management of Daewoo Nigeria Limited to work at the LNG site in Gbarian, Yenagoa, saying it negates the local content policy in the oil and gas sector.

In a communique issued at the end of its emergency State Executive Council Meeting in Yenagoa and signed by the state NLC Chairman, Mr. Bio Ben Basuo, the union noted that the massive engagement of welders and fitters by the firm was worrisome, especially when the services of such skilled persons could be sourced from the indigenous population.

The communique reads in part, “The congress in session express dismay at the massive importation of expatriates welders/fitters by the management of Daewoo DN54 currently working at the LNG site in Gbarian, Yenagoa local government area of Bayelsa State.”

Basuo observed that the local content policy is a directive of the Federal Government, implying that companies should reflect a certain percentage of the indigenous population in their areas of operation, but wondered why Daewoo is violating the apex government/NNPC directive on oil and gas in the oil and gas sector.

The NLC therefore called on the Bayelsa State Government to quickly intervene so as to avert a possible crisis situation and create jobs for the teeming jobless youths, especially those that are professionals in the oil and gas sub-sector of the economy.

The communique also condemned the recent transfer and posting of staff of local government areas in the state, where junior staff and non professionals are made to boss were made to head department, while in some cases serving youth corps members were given appointments to head of departments at the expense of serving staff.

The NLC boss therefore advised the Local Government Service Commission to address this injustice in the interest of the service and peaceful industrial harmony.

source: click here

 

The #6 illegality, according to the COREN, which I blogged about here says: It is illegal to

* Engage expatriate engineering personnel to do engineering work when qualified Nigerian engineering personnel are unemployed and available.

What are your thoughts, please share!

 

related posts:

The Nigerian Engineering series – Coren

 

 

 

Technorati Tags: welding,Nigeria Labor Congress,Bayelsa State,expatriates

Re-thinking the NYSC scheme by Luke Onyekakeyah

Re-thinking the NYSC scheme
By Luke Onyekakeyah

THE reported move by members of the House of Representatives to sanction ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) that reject corps members amounts to scratching the problem on the surface while overlooking the main issue at stake. That move won’t change anything. By the time the lawmakers have sanctioned hundreds or thousands of establishments that normally accept corps members, there would be few left to absorb the teeming number of graduates that are qualified for the service. That would have created more complex problem than the action was intended to solve.

We must be frank to ourselves. The National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) is in serious trouble in all ramifications. The scheme is faced with a plethora of problems arising from the endemic corruption and bad economic situation. To be candid, what the lawmakers should be considering is whether or not the scheme should continue or be scrapped altogether. To do that would require a total re-assessment of the scheme, a re-evaluation of its continued relevance after 35 years vis-?-vis the capacity of the economy to support it.

On this note, the indication by the lawmakers to amend the NYSC law comes closer to what the country needs at this stage. That amendment should result in one of two outcomes: One, to come up with a fresh and more effective scheme that the economy can conveniently carry or two, the abrogation of the scheme in its totality. Whichever way, it is important that something should be done now to change the structure of this wobbling, ineffective and disoriented national program.

The NYSC scheme was introduced in the country at a time when it was mostly needed. When the Biafra war ended in 1970, the country was left devastated from the pangs of the excruciating three-year fratricidal war. The defunct Eastern region was particularly ravaged as the people nursed the wounds inflicted by the war. The then military regime under Gen. Yakubu Gowon, being preoccupied with how to re-unit a divided nation and heal the paranoia of its constituent ethnic groups decided to establish the NYSC scheme. The scheme was established on 22 May, 1973, with the overriding objectives of promoting national unity, integration and rapid economic development.

There is no doubt that the idea behind the scheme was laudable and the objectives lofty. For instance, when the scheme was inaugurated, there was real need to re-unite the various ethnic nationalities that make up Nigeria. The event of the war caused a mass movement of people from their places of residence in other parts of the country to their ethnic homeland. The NYSC served a framework at that bleak period to re-distribute educated manpower from one part of the country to the other. That provided the youths who beheld the ravages of the war to appreciate the culture of the other ethnic groups across the country. That objective has since been achieved.

Also, the NYSC has contributed immeasurably in alleviating the manpower need in some states, particularly the northern states that lacked trained personnel. Government establishments and employers of labor in the organized private sector have reaped from the "cheap" labor provided by the scheme. But it must be pointed out that the scheme more or less has helped to promote unemployment in the country. It is common knowledge that many unpatriotic establishments in the public and private sectors preferred using free corps members in their operations than engaging them on permanent basis. This is because they believe that every year, a new batch of corpers would be there from which they would readily draw from.

Moreover, when the NYSC scheme was established, there was severe lack of trained manpower in the country. The post-war reconstruction effort of government at the time needed such trained manpower in different parts of the country. Again, the NYSC provided the framework for re-distributing the scarce trained manpower that was needed in different sectors of the economy. The result was that employers of labor as well as MDAs readily accepted corps members posted to them. There were virtually no cases of corps members being rejected at least within the first decade of the scheme. Incidents of corps members rejecting posting was not rampant except in cases where the corpers were married and didn’t want to separate from their partner. Above all, the economy was buoyant enough to accommodate the corps members.

Another point that should be mentioned is that at the time the scheme was set up, the number of prospective corps members was minimal. With only thirteen federal universities, the population of corps members was manageable. It was in the quest to boost the number of prospective corps members that made graduates of polytechnics and colleges of education to be included in the program. Thus, NCE graduates participated in the programme. The NYSC scheme arguably fared well within the first decade of its establishment and the reason was that the economy boomed with industrial productivity at its peak. But from the mid 1980s, when the economy nosedived, the fortunes of the scheme changed along the same line. This was compounded with the establishment of private universities from the 80s that began to produce large number of graduates annually.

The NYSC scheme, to me, was one of those good ideas that were put forward with the expectation that the country would move steadily on the path of economic progress and development. But this has not been the case. The country has disappointed all expectations. The NYSC and the economy are moving in opposite directions. While the population of prospective corps members has grown exponentially, the economy has shrunk beyond imagination. The truth therefore is that given the present depressed state of the economy where thousands of industries have folded up, it would be foolhardy and indeed pretentious to still believe that the thousands of qualified graduates from the 97 universities and more from the polytechnics must serve in the NYSC scheme. This is no longer feasible. The authorities should patriotically appreciate this fact and rethink the entire project. The last few years in particular have seen the worst of the NYSC scheme both in logistics and administration. The entire programme has become a nightmare and innocent graduates are the ones suffering. Many have lost their lives.

For example, looking at the initial objectives of the scheme, it is obvious that today, many of them are out of tune with reality. Today, the country is not lacking trained manpower. The numerous tertiary institutions in different parts of the country are producing skilled manpower. No state is excluded. There is practically no state of the federation that doesn’t have a university or polytechnic within its domain. The truth is that there is severe graduate unemployment throughout the country. In contrast, when the scheme was established, graduates were like hot cake. But the situation has changed.

T he evidence is that graduates who are posted to some government and private sector establishments are rejected. While some of the rejection may be frivolous, the reality is that there is glut in the labour market, which makes employers to be discriminatory on whom they should accept. This is what the House of Reps is kicking against. But you can’t force labour, which would be redundant on any establishment.

Worst still, the entire scheme has been mismanaged in line with the general mismanagement in the country. There is no infrastructure for the scheme. Some states managed to build orientation camps for corps members, but the condition of these structures is nothing to write home about. Thousands of graduates are assembled in these dilapidated enclosures without water, toilet facilities, beddings and electricity. The corpers defecate in the surrounding bushes and endanger their lives in the process.

There is unbridled bribery and corruption going on in the entire set up. Some unscrupulous NYSC officials have turned the scheme into a honey pot for self-enrichment. The issue of uniting the country through the scheme is out of the question as corps members bribe their way and choose where they want to serve. Favouritism, manipulations, cheating and inconsistencies have become the hallmark of the scheme.

Finally, the bleak economic condition has made it almost difficult for the federal government to foot the mounting bill of running the scheme. The measures adopted so far to exclude some category of corps members such as NCE graduates and on the basis of pregnancy and age limit have not helped matters. There is nothing wrong in taking a critical look on the entire scheme with a view to downsizing it to manageable proportion because it is no longer working. The purpose has been defeated. My candid opinion is that the scheme should be made optional or in the alternative scrapped. Graduates who wish to participate in the programme should be engaged while the rest should be issued with exemption certificate. There is no need pretending that all is well while the reality proves otherwise.

source: rethinking the NYSC scheme

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