Employment: Reps seek abolition of age limit for graduates
Friday, 21 October 2011 00:00 From Terhemba Daka, Abuja Business Services - Business News

Urge speedy review of UNEP report on Ogoni

THE age limit pandemic, which has added to the plight of job seeking graduates in the country, may soon become history, as the House of Representatives, yesterday, called for the abolition of the barrier as a requirement for graduates’ employment in the country.

Government agencies and corporate bodies have over the years, required fresh tertiary institutions’ graduates to be below 28 years, sometimes 25 years, for employment in their respective establishments.

With phenomenal truncations of academic programmes, mostly through industrial actions, which have unsavourily been elongating students’ tenure at the institutions, most of them have been finding themselves graduating into unemployment, as they usually clock over 28 years by the end of their respective courses.

The legislators’ decision followed a motion moved on the matter yesterday, by Representative Arua Arunsi, on the urgent need to address the age barrier to graduate employment in Nigeria.

Consequently, the House in its resolution on the motion urged the Federal Government to direct all its Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs), as well as multinationals, corporate organisations and the organised private sector to remove the age barrier to graduate employment in the country, since according to it, “recruitment should be based on competence and skills.”

This came also as the legislators, yesterday, urged President Goodluck Jonathan to persuade the committee set up to review the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) report on the environmental degradation due to the activities of the Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) in Ogoni, in Rivers State, to turn in its recommendation without further delay. That committee was headed by Diezani Alison-Madueke.

Representative Asita Honourable, had in a motion drawn the attention of the House to the failure of the review committee to turn in its report two months after it was constituted, and only given one week by the President to present a report that would guide government in developing a white paper for the implementation of the UNEP’s report.

In his lead debate on the motion against the use of age barrier for employment, Arunsi argued that besides breaching the graduates’ rights of freedom from discrimination, the schools system in the country had been an added pains to the unemployed graduates, who had to spend between six and eight years for a programme of four years in the university.

He said the continuous use of age as a criterion for graduate employment had ironically resulted in sharp practices of age falsification, a development the lawmaker noted was rather relegating merit to the background.

Speaking in support of the motion, other lawmakers including Adams Jagaba, Chineye Ike, Nkiruka Onyejiocha and Olumide Osoba in their separate submissions, condemned the practice, describing it as unfair to the affected youths.

Jagaba however, called for an urgent review of the retirement age in the civil service with a view to creating vacancies for the teeming unemployed graduates in the country.

Leading the debate on the motion on the delay of report being expected from the Presidential committee for the review of the UNEP report on Ogoni land, Honourable, who described the Niger Delta people as being “happy to contribute to the economy of the country,” however lamented that degradation in the area due to oil exploration was carried out with impunity.

Expressing worries on why the Diezani-Alison-led committee was foot-dragging in turning in a report two months after its constitution as against the two weeks it was offered by the President, the lawmaker said while so much has been committed to carry the initial study by UNEP, it was obvious that international best practices were not adopted SPDC in the area.

Other Members including Representative Mushood Mustapha, Daniel Reyeineju and Peter Akpatason spoke in support of the motion.



http://www.guardiannewsngr.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=64983:-employment-reps-seek-abolition-of-age-limit-for-graduates&catid=31:business&Itemid=562

No problem. When and if this is passed into law, employers will overtly remove it from their list of requirements but covertly adopt it during shortlisting.

You can't circumvent the laws of demand and supply. They are very stubborn and exasperating laws. The reps should ask themselves: how did we get to this point? If jobs were in abundance, would there have been a need for that limit? They should work on ways to unleash Nigeria's numerous potentials and provide the ENVIRONMENT for job creation such that demand for graduates overtakes the supply of graduates. This is what will genuinely make that limit become history. Any other approach is tantamount to scratching the surface.

Imagine industrial action turning what should be a 4 year course into an 8 year course.

4 years of your life wasted

Anyway, Pukkah is right.