A two day capacity building workshop for proper reportage of migration issues has been held for members of the Labour Correspondents Association of Nigeria, LACAN, in Abuja.
Tagged “Training Workshop on Workers’ Engagement and Forced Labour Reporting using ILO Media Toolkit, ” the training was organised by the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC and the International Labour Organization, ILO Office in Nigeria.
Setting the tone for the workshop, the NLC Migration Officer, Comrade James Eustace said that the Labour union, the International Labour Organization, ILO and Labour correspondents will be sharing ideas on addressing the recurring challenges of returning migrants, especially in the period of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Labour migrants
He said the media must appreciate the present challenges of returning migrants, especially labour migrants and look into the future on the reportage of the issues surrounding migration or slave labour.
“We discovered that the reportage of migration issues has not been encouraging and again biased against the migrant worker, especially the protection of the human and labour rights of the migrant worker is not given attention in the media.
“We believe that the media, especially labour correspondents need to be carried along in all our activities because we believe that it is through them that what we are doing will be show cased to the world,” Comrade James Eustace said.
He said that migration especially in terms of abuse of the migration worker has been in the global space for a long time.
“ The irregular migration of Africans especially Nigerians to the countries of the Gulf has been on the increase and yet, there is little that is being done to ensure that regular path ways are being promoted and provided for migrants to migrate.
“As Trade Union, labour migration is a core trade union issue that cannot just be left to other actors without playing dominant role, being in the fore front of the advocacy for the protection of migrant workers’ right”, he said.
Fair recruitment
Dr Emeka Obiezu, ILO Consultant on Development of Toolkit for Media Reportage on Forced Labour and Fair Recruitment, one of the facilitators of the training, described a labour migrant as anybody who leaves the shores of his country to another country for the purpose of finding a job.
Quoting a 2021 ILO Report, Dr Obiezu said there were 169 million migrant workers accounting for 59 percent of the world’s international migration population of 281million.
“There is also an estimated 24.9 million people in forced labour around the world,” he said.
Participants at the two day training were taken through the rudiments of identifying a migration story, and what it takes to do the a thorough investigations for a balanced story.
Commendation
Chairman of the Labour Correspondents Association of Nigeria, Mr Michael Oche, commended the NLC and the ILO for organising the training, saying that it has provided members with better understanding of the issues surrounding labour migration.
He called on beneficiaries of the training to imbibe the knowledge garnered for effective writing and reportage of migration stories.
Lateefah Ibrahim
