‘FG’s post-COVID intervention not reaching informal workers’

Informal workers protest exclusion from interventions

Members of the Federation of Informal Workers’ Organisations of Nigeria (FIWON), protested their ‘exclusion’ from federal and state governments’ intervention programmes, saying one of the reasons many small-scale businesses collapse every day. 

The workers, at a press conference in Abuja wondered why the government is lacking a database for the workers reportedly employing over 80% of the working population and contributing close to 60% to the national GDP.

Speaking through their General Secretary, Gbenga Komolafe, they called on the federal government to embark on comprehensive inclusion of the informal sector in the national social protection policy framework which must recognize the challenge of targeting beneficiaries.

Komolafe said, “Unfortunately, most of the intervention plans announced by federal and state governments have failed to specifically target the informal sector despite its macro – economic importance, employing over 80% of the working population and contributing close to 60% to the national GDP.

“The reason is very simple. Though the informal sector constitutes the micro end of the Macro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) schema, the sector actually employs the overwhelming proportion of working people on a self employed, own account basis with very limited capacities.

“This ‘micro’ end of the MSME schema, employing an overwhelming number of working people, is easily lost in the implementation of the several government intervention programmes.”