The National Youths Service Corps (NYSC) has urged pregnant corps members to serve the nation as expected of them saying “pregnancy is not a disease.”
Mrs Mofoluwaso Williams, Kogi NYSC Coordinator, gave the charge in her paper titled: “Tackling emerging Challenges in Corps Administration through NYSC/Stakeholders” at the Kogi Annual 2023 Corps Employers Workshop held at the Government House, Lokoja.
Williams urged employers and organisations not to allow corps members to use pregnancy as alibi in any form not to perform their civic responsibilities to the nation.
She said, “every workplace has its own peculiar challenges, so is our various places of primary assignments where corps members are engaged for the one year mandatory service to their fatherland.
“Pregnancy is not a disease, therefore organisations should not allow corps members to use this as alibi in any form.
“Pregnant/nursing corps members who use pregnancy as alibi for absenteeism or rudeness to officers should not be tolerated.”
The coordinator said that she was aware that employers have such challenges which include: absenteeism, laziness, rudeness and absconding.
According to her, there are situations where a corps member is usually absent from work without authorisation and even fails to report at his/her place of assignment or reports initially and takes off later.
“We also have lazy corps members who are not ready to work but wants to be paid for job not done or those who are not ready to do anything extra for the organisation.
“There are also “toxic corps members,” who never see anything good in any other person except themselves. Such have anger issues and fight both their colleagues and other staff,” she said
Williams advised employers to take the engagement of corps members seriously and ensure that they assist them to develop themselves into qualitative, trusted and capable future leaders.
