Organized Labour Insists On Nationwide Strike, After Fresh Meeting with Federal Government
The organized labour has insisted on actualizing its 14-day strike notice to compel the federal government to implement the October 2023 agreement.
The 14-day strike notice started counting on February 9, 2024.
Leaders of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and Trade Union Congress (TUC) insisted on the nationwide strike after a meeting with representatives of the federal government on Monday evening.
The meeting presided over by the labour minister of state, Nkerika Onyejeocha, ended with the labour leaders rejecting all her pleas that the strike should be called off.
In a statement signed by the leaders of the two labour unions, Joe Ajaero and Festus Usifo, the organised Labour expressed sadness that despite the passage of time, The majority of these crucial agreements remain unmet or negligibly addressed, indicating a blatant disregard for the principles of good faith, welfare and rights of Nigerian workers and Nigerians.
Read Also:
TUC, ASUS Praise Abiodun for Christmas Bonus to Civil Servants in Ogun
The unions said despite their efforts to ensure industrial peace, the government seemed unperturbed by the mass suffering and hardship across the country.
After the removal of the fuel subsidy by the President on May 29, 2023, the labour unions reached a 16-point agreement with the Federal Government on measures to cushion the pains of the subsidy removal on workers.
Among other things, the government agreed to pay N35,000 to all federal workers beginning from last September pending when a new national minimum wage would be signed into law.
The resolution provided that the wage award would be paid to the federal workers for six months while states were encouraged to extend the same benefit to their workers.
The Federal Government also pledged to make cash transfers to vulnerable Nigerians and provide 100 CNG (compressed natural gas) buses nationwide to ease the high transportation costs.
Speaking in an interview with The PUNCH on Tuesday, the NLC Vice President, Hakeem Ambali, insisted that the strike would go on unless the Federal Government addressed “the untold hardship meted on Nigerians by the famous pronunciation that subsidy is gone’ on 29 May.
He lamented that the Federal Government had yet to fulfil its part of the agreement with the labour movement.
