Ahead of the meeting between the Federal Government of Nigeria and the organised labour scheduled to hold today, June 19, the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, has declared that the government must meet its demands to mitigate the effect of the fuel subsidy removal.
The organised labour threatened that it would not hesitate to declare industrial actions, adding that it only suspended its initial planned strike.
NLC stressed that the high cost of petrol was making life hard for Nigerians and urged the government to act fast with respect to providing palliative for the citizens, they also said they were expecting an increase in the minimum wage from N30,000 to N150,000.
The Federal Government and labour unions met on June 5, 2023, with a resolution to reconvene on June 19 to agree on the implementation framework of the resolutions reached.
The Chief of Staff to the President, Femi Gbajabiamila, who led the government side, made the disclosure at the end of the meeting between labour and government representatives at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
According to him, the June 5 meeting agreed on a seven-point resolution to mitigate the effect of the subsidy removal on petrol on Nigerians.
He also declared that the FG, The Trade Union Congress (TUC), and the NLC, are to establish a joint committee to review any wage increase proposal or award and establish a framework and timeline for implementation.
They will also review the World Bank Financed Cash Transfer scheme and propose the inclusion of low-income earners in the programme.
“The FG, the TUC and the NLC to revive the CNG conversion programme earlier agreed with Labour centres in 2021 and work out detailed implementation and timing,” Gbajabiamila had stated.
Speaking on Sunday, June 18, ahead of today’s meeting, the Vice President, NLC, Adewale Adeyanju, said a lot of things had been presented by labour unions, stressing that the government should not act funny.
“There are a lot of things that labour has been putting before the government. The refineries need to be revamped. We cannot continue to import refined petroleum products and be spending on subsidies all the time.
“Labour has its set of demands and by the time we meet with the government tomorrow we will list them out again,” he stated.
When asked to reveal the action the NLC would take in case the government failed to give in to the demands of the labour union, Adeyanju replied, “You know we only suspended our strike as a result of the need to meet on this.
“So the government should know that things are becoming difficult and they (the government) should not decide to do anything funny. The strike was only suspended. It was an ultimatum that was given out and it (strike) was suspended.
The Labour vice president, however, is optimistic that the meeting with FG would be fruitful and the government would not act funny.
Adeyanju, however, expressed optimism that the meeting would be fruitful and insisted that the NLC would not want the government to behave funny.
