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House Legislate On Age Discrimination Against Job Seekers

House Legislate On Age Discrimination Against Job Seekers


The House of Representatives has on Wednesday 15 May, 2019 passed a Bill to stop various government Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) from denying eligible and qualified applicants employment on the ground of Age. While considering a report from the Committee on Police Affairs on the subject matter, following a Public Hearing on the piece of legislation, the House resolved into Committee of the Whole to consider the 15 clauses contained in the Bill.

Note that at this junction, the Bill had already scaled first and second reading, hence, the Chairman, Committee on House Rules, Hon. Edward Pwajok had the leave of the Chairman to highlight the main intention of the Bill. According to Pwajok, putting age restrictions to certain job opportunities in Nigeria is no longer fashionable. 

This does not in any way encourage graduates and applicants who did not have the means to acquire early education or who might have graduated early from the higher institutions but would have spent close to 7 to 10 years searching for job. He informed that the level of unemployment today is alarming, yet, many are denied even the opportunity to apply for the few job vacancies in the country.

Also, Hon. Pwajok decried the rate at which job seekers are falsifying their Age just to secure employment into MDAs. He stated that if a law prohibiting employers from discriminating against applicants on the basis of Age were in place, no job seeker would want to indulge in Age falsification. 

He further informed that there is a silent law in Civil Service that allows people to be granted pensionable employment so long as they are not above 45 years of age. He then questions the basis for discriminating against applicants who are still eligible, qualified and by all standard fall within the active workforce bracket?

Lending his voice to support the legislation, the Deputy Speaker and Chairman of the Committee of the Whole, Rt. Hon. Yusuf Lasun averred that it is against international labor laws for an applicant to be denied employment opportunity on the ground of his or her age. He commended the authors of the Bill, said with such a law in place, there will be fairness in terms of job selection. 
Thereafter, the clauses of the Bill were approved with some amendments which implies that the Bill, when finally signed into law “No citizen of the Federal Republic of Nigeria shall be denied employment into government Ministries, Department and Agencies on the ground of Age” as one or the clauses read.

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