By Johnbosco Agbakwuru, Abuja
The National Executive Council, NEC of the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, is currently going on at the Labour Headquarters, Abuja.
The meeting is in respect of the recent announcement by President Bola Tinubu after his inauguration on May 29, where he said that subsidy is gone.
Although the immediate past administration had ended fuel subsidy, it went ahead to make provision for payment of subsidy till end of June.
However, after President Tinubu had announced that subsidy is gone, in less than 24 hours petroleum marketers shut down their filling stations and adjusted their pump price.
The Nigeria National Petroleum Company limited, also announced a new template of pricing that saw the pump price of Petroleum Motor Spirit, PMS, jumped up to N557.
The organised labour in a meeting with the government representatives on Wednesday at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, told the government to revert to the old price before any meaningful negotiation can take place.
In his opening remarks at the NEC meeting, the NLC President, Comrade Joe Ajaero said that the level of increase of PMS leaves much to desire.
The NLC President, who said that issue of subsidy removal had lingered for over 20 years, said that the Congress will not succumb to propaganda and blackmail and is determined to probe the payment of subsidy in the past eight years so as to unravel those collecting the money and how much that have been expended.
Ajaero, said the NEC meeting was called to interrogate the ‘illegal announcement’ of over N500 pump price by the NNPCL and that the NEC will give directive on the next action after the meeting.
He said that the organised labour has asked the government to withdraw the figure, contending that about 50 per cent of the states have not been paying the N30,000 minimum wage.
“At the meeting with the Federal Government, they were not only provocative, we saw the contempt they hold Nigerians, they said they will give N5,000 to 50 million poor Nigerians.”
Source: Vanguard
