Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has said that it would beam its searchlight on media owners who enslaved journalists in the country.
President of the Congress, Comrade Ayuba Wabba, who disclosed this at the inauguration of new executive members of Labour Correspondents Association of Nigeria (LACAN) said the organised labour would sustained its partnership with Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) and RATTAWU to actualise this plan.
Wabba said the act that media owners encouraged journalists to use their identity cards as meal ticket, without living wages, was criminal and must be discouraged.
According to him, with the kind of hazards journalists go through while carrying out their duties, they ought to be well paid.
“We will be ready to work with NUJ and RATTAWU to see how these issues are addressed because it will be criminal to assume that once somebody is given an identity card, then that means his condition of Service. We must find a way of ensuring that our journalists work in dignity because we need to create a new source of information.
“Let me assure you of our partnership and working together. All of us are one family because I know that NUJ and RATTAWU are affiliated of the NLC and all of you are either members of NUJ or RATTAWU. So, we are all members of one larger family and have a role to play. Your role is to ensure that our workers are one to have their voice heard because if you look at the trend of relationship within the tripod, the workers happen to be the weaklings.
“They don’t have the resources. They don’t have the power and in most cases, they are the people being exploited and so, we need to give them a voice.
