The Federation of Construction Industry (FOCI) has appealed to the Federal Government to quickly check the menace of persistent kidnapping of construction workers in Nigeria, saying that the ugly trend was capable of “killing” the sector and the nation’s economy.
The group noted that the ugly trend posed a serious threat to ongoing projects in the country, warning that the country may lose foreign investment worth billions of dollars if the problem is not effectively checked.
President of FOCI, Solomon Ogunbusola in a statement in Abuja yesterday, and made available to DailyPost said that in the last one year, eleven expatriate workers by Setraco Nigeria Limited had been kidnapped in the South.
Only on Saturday, seven expatriates forcefully seized in February in the Northern part of the country were reportedly killed by their abductors.
Ogunbusola said: “Nigerians will still recall that an expatriate employee of Dantata & Sawoe Construction Company, Nigeria Limited was kidnapped last year and was never released. He was killed months later. We also recall that one Briton and one Italian worker were killed in an attempt to rescue them by security forces in Sokoto last year.
“During the same period, four expatriates working for a Chinese construction company were killed.
“As the list of kidnapped victims grows by the day, construction companies are finding it more and more difficult to execute their projects, even with the provision of security personnel on some of our sites.
“Pervasive sense of insecurity on sites and in the atmosphere generally is not limited to the fate of expatriates alone.
“Nigerians as well are not totally immune from the danger.
“Companies have lost some of their Nigerian Technical and Support Staff for the same reasons,” he said.
Ogunbusola urged the Federal and State governments to do more in the protection of construction workers before the construction industry grinds to a halt and throw more than 250,000 workers into the unemployment market, while development projects are completely shut down.
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