Workers seek creation of informal economy ministry

The Federation of Informal Workers’ Organisations of Nigeria (FIWON) has called on the Federal Government to create a Ministry of Informal Economy.

The move, the workers said, will help to oversee the implementation of a progressive modernisation, development and formalisation of the informal economy.

FIWON proposed this at its second delegates conference in Osun State. It noted that the informal economy, which employs over 90 per cent of the Nigerian working population, also contributes over 60 per cent of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), hence demanding a ministry to oversee the sector.

General Secretary of FIWON, Gbenga Komolafe, said the government should go beyond tokenism in providing social protection for informal workers and in providing palliatives during economic shocks like fuel subsidy removal and massive devaluation of the Naira.

He lamented that existing social security frameworks in Nigeria such as the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), the Workmen Compensation Act and the Micro Pension Plan (MPP), practically exclude informal workers,

He said the micro pension plan should urgently be revised to give room for the government’s complementary contributions to informal workers’ savings into the pension fund.

This, he said, was to reduce the effect of inflation on the savings of informal workers into the pension fund.He urged the government to expand the coverage of the Employees Compensation Act (ECA) in the areas of survivors’ benefits, disability care and support and geriatric care to include informal workers.

Komolafe also urged that the government should implement universal health coverage and free health insurance for elderly citizens who are 60 years and above, pregnant women and children of 12 years and below.

According to him, these were critical as the working and living conditions of most informal workers are precarious and in conditions of extreme poverty without any technical, financial, or social assistance from the state.

He lamented that the majority of persons in the sector are women, who are mostly breadwinners in their families.

“The principles of social and solidarity economy are not new; they are embedded in our culture of age-grade mutual support and community work, as well as women’s rotatory savings.

The cooperative movement was heavily supported by the Western Regional government of Nigeria in the 1950s and 1960s to transform agricultural production, processing and export, employing a significant percentage of the population, touching the lives of most families in the Western Region, that in some states, FIWON Multipurpose Cooperative Society is already facilitating savings and credit, access to renewable energy, health insurance and land acquisition, among others for members,” he stated.

Komolafe urged the Department of Social Security and Cooperative Development under the Federal Ministry of Labour and the state governments to offer financial and technical support for the growth and development of FIWON Cooperative.

To this end, he added that the government’s social intervention programmes in the form of palliatives, grants and support intended for informal workers should be routed through the FIWON Cooperatives in particular and the Cooperative Movement in Nigeria, in general.