Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) in Kano, says it will adopt proactive measures to protect workers against exploitation by the employers.

Mr Kabir Minjibir, the NLC Chairman in the state, stated this on Wednesday in Kano, while reacting to the rescued of 126 workers allegedly held hostage by their employer.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the workers were rescued by the police at the Popular Farms and Mills Limited located in Challawa Industrial Estate, Kano.

Minjibir said that NLC would take necessary action to ensure that the affected worker were adequately compensated and the culprits prosecuted.

He said: “The Food and Beverages Union briefed the state council on the development.

“It is annoying that there is no brach of the union in the company, the workers tried their best to form a leadership, a move resisted by the company.

“The Food and beverages Union will investigate the matter and report back to us.

“We are ready to write to the relevant authorities concerned, to enable the workers form a leadership to protect their rights.”

Minjibir added that the council would also involved human right bodies to look into the matter with a view to establish infringement of the workers fundamental rights.

“If the right of the workers were violated by the company, the human rights bodies will ensure that they are compensated,” he added.

The police command in the state said it had, on June 21, recieved a complaint from an NGO, the Global Community for Human Right Network, alleging that some labourers were wrongly confined inside the Popular Farms and Mills Limited.

The police said it conducted search in the company’s located at No. 54 Challawa Industrial Estate, Kano, and rescued 126 workers. 

“On receiving the information a team of policemen were deployed and when a search was conducted, 126 labourers trapped inside the factory for three months were rescued,” the command’s spokesman,  DSP Abdullahi  Haruna said. (NAN)