The Federal Government and Organised Labour, have agreed on modalities to crash transport fares and prices of essential commodities, especially foodstuffs.
Recall that recently NNPC retail outlets raised petrol prices to N1,030 per litre from N897 in Abuja, while in Lagos, the price jumped to N998 per litre from N868. Other regions experienced similar increases.
This is the second price hike in a month, reflecting an increase of about 14.8 per cent or N133.
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The development triggered higher transportation and food costs across the country.
The organised labour and the Organised Private Sector demanded an immediate reversal of the price hike.
The Nigeria Labour Congress and Trade Union Congress condemned the price hike and called for an immediate reversal.
Following the insistence of the labour leaders on reduction of fuel prices, the Federal Government team, led by the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, George Akume, held a closed-door meeting with the unions in Abuja on Wednesday.
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Other members at the meeting included the National Security Adviser, Nuhu Ribadu; Minister of Finance, Wale Edun; Minister of Budget and National Planning, Abubakar Bagudu; Minister of State for Labour and Employment, Nkeiruka Onyejiocha and Minister of State for Petroleum, Heineken Lokpobiri, among others.
According to Vanguard, sources at the meeting disclosed that the government and organised labour agreed on ways to reduce transportation fares and the cost of foodstuffs.
They also agreed to continue engagement and discussions to thaw frosty relationship that had existed before now.
“Government promised to release over 2,000 Compressed Natural Gas, CNG, conversion kits in the first instance. It also promised to release 45 CNG buses to Labour to complete the 90 earlier promised organised labour.
“As part of efforts at crashing transport fares across the country, the Federal Government will hold a meeting with state governors to fully embrace the CNG buses. This will also affect the cost of foodstuffs as it will reduce the costs of transporting food items from different locations to consumers drastically. These are parts of efforts to cushion the effects of the subsidy removal on the citizens.
“The government also promised to summon a meeting of the economic council to impress it upon state governors to ensure the new minimum wage takes off across the country this month.
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“It also promised to incorporate labour into the economic council, so labour will participate and monitor economic policies of government, instead of government throwing policies at labour and Nigerians that may result in agitation or protest.
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“They agreed that it is better to ‘jaw-jaw than war-war’, meaning, there will be continuous dialogue between government and labour.
“The government also promised to hasten and complete the refineries. They said almost five refineries are about to be completed,’’ a source said.
The sources equally said “government promised to pay all outstanding arrears and wage awards to workers and inaugurate all the boards labour has representatives.”
One of the sources said “all these are promises, but the good thing is that it was agreed that the meeting will be a continuous process.”
Another source also said the issue of government not honouring agreement was raised, adding that government admitted that it did not do well in that regard and promised to change.
Asked if labour was satisfied with the meeting, the source said: “It is not about satisfaction but a way forward from the past where government was not discussing with organised labour.
‘’If this trend or practice continues, there is every possibility that disagreements between government and labour will reduce.”
There’ll be continuous engagement with labour — FG
Addressing newsmen at the end of the meeting, the Minister of Information and National Orientation, Alhaji Mohammed Idris said the Federal Government will continue to engage with organized labour and not wait until there was tension on any issue before doing so.
Fielding questions on whether the meeting with the labour had anything to do with minimum wage, the minister said: “These are just general discussions. Government is always desirous of engaging with Labour, this is one of such engagements.
‘’We will continue to interact with them. We won’t wait until there is tension about anything before we engage Labour.
“This is a renewed commitment on behalf of government to continue to engage Labour on a number of issues. These engagements have been very fruitful and we will continue to engage with them.”
On what was discussed at the meeting, Idris said: “A lot of things were discussed. But like I said, this is work in progress, this is something that isn’t a one-off thing, but we have not reached anything that we think we can tell Nigerians now, but what is more important is that, there is going to be continuous engagement between us and labour for the good of the country.”
Asked if the meeting had to do with the recent hike in fuel price, he said: “This is our continuous engagement with labour for the good of the country. You know that labour is an important component of this country, all of them are our brothers and sisters.
‘’Government is there for everyone, including labour, so we will continue to engage labour for the good of the country.”
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