The Federal Government has concluded plans to liberalize the Expatriate Quota System Administration to prevent abuse and ensure compliance with laid down rules and regulations.
This was made known by the Minister of Interior, Rauf Aregbesola when he was featured in a forum organized by NAN in Abuja.
Aregbesola said that the liberalization would allow Nigerians with the required competence to participate in monitoring the system.
What the Interior Minister is saying
Aregbesola said, “We will soon liberalize it to even involve other Nigerians who have the competence to help us monitor and report.
“If Nigerian workers in any place see that the foreigners who are in their companies are not augmented by the relevant number of Nigerians, they can report directly to my office.
“What do I mean, the rule is that, for every expatriate that is in any company working in Nigeria, there must be two Nigerians understudy.
“So, Nigerian workers wherever you are, in your unions, as an individual, please be our eyes, be our ears, if you see an inappropriately located expatriate without competent Nigerian understudies let us know.
“So, we will do the best in our capacity to administer the process, monitor, and ensure that companies comply with the rules, but let Nigerians who are the ultimate beneficiaries of this arrangement be our eyes and ears.“
Processing of Expatriate Quota permits digtizied
The minister revealed that processing the Expatriate Quota permit has been entirely digitized.
He said, “One can process expatriate quota requests from your office, it is digitized now, but we have not totally solved all the challenges, we equally have the human factor.
“We are at it, we are not giving up and we are monitoring now.
“We put together a task force involving all stakeholders from the unions to professional organizations, engineers, and the staffers of the ministry and my office.
“They are all over the place checking the records of companies issued administrative expatriate quota permit, and those who have expatriates but are not documented.’’
What you should know
Recall that earlier in August 2022, the Federal Government had moved to enforce Nigeria’s expatriate quota policy with the re-inauguration of an expanded task force on expatriate quota administration in order to achieve effective and efficient service delivery.
The action by the government followed abuses and gross violations of the policy by foreigners and some organizations in the country.
Some of these abuses include, but are not limited to; companies employing expatriates without approval from the ministry, allegations of companies obtaining fake permits for their expatriates; companies half-hearted or non-commitment to grooming Nigerian understudies.
Others are companies recruiting fewer than required understudies and giving them non-commensurate remunerations; illegal transfers of approvals between and among firms and expatriates.
It also includes failure to train Nigerian understudies up to the standard of the expatriates they are being groomed to replace, and expatriates staying on their jobs for more than 10 years.
