By Victor Ahiuma-Young
LAGOS—Food, Beverage and Tobacco Senior Staff Association, FOBTOB, Monday, urged the Federal Government through the Federal Ministry of Labour and Employment to urgently wade into rising cases of redundancies in the food sector to save members’ jobs.
President of FOBTOB, Quadri Olaleye, said this in Oye-Ekiti in Ekiti State, during the commissioning of FOBTOB Hostel Project 3, a 42-room hostel for students at the Federal University, Oye-Ekiti.
He said: “The COVID-19 pandemic, coupled with the unavailability of foreign exchange, low sales, high cost of production, border closure for over a year and difficult operating environment have brought about redundancy in the sector as employers can no longer cope with meeting demands of the workforce.
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“For now I have more than five companies that sent a letter to us that they want to carry out redundancy and we have started negotiations.
“I also have a lot of witch-hunting cases. We are battling with this and if necessary we are going to call the attention of the Ministry of Labour to intervene.
“Our employers complain that forex is not available because production has gone up and the operational environment is so difficult that they cannot sell their products, coupled with the fact that the border had been closed more than a year now, which is affecting sales of products.
“As a result of that, they said they need to shed weight on the number of employees.”
VANGUARD
