Mkpoikana Udoma
Port Harcourt — The Trade Union Congress has urged the Federal Government to fund the items signed in the Memorandum of Understanding, MoU it had with organised labour, from the savings made by the government from subsidy removal.
Recall that the organised labour signed a 15-point MoU with the Federal Government, as a last-minute effort to avert the planned nationwide strike, arising from the withdrawal of subsidy on PMS by the Federal Government and the resultant inflation in the country.
TUC Chairman in Rivers State, Comrade Ikechukwu Onyefuru, explained that the government has saved an average of N400billion so far from fuel subsidy removal, according to labour calculation.
Onyefuru reminded the federal government to commence execution of the items contained in the MoU before the expiration of the 30 days warning strike suspension.
He said, “Remember we called for a warning strike which has been suspended for thirty days and we signed an MoU with the federal government, so we expect them to commence the execution of the items contained there.
“Failure in the next 30days means commencing the strike action without notice. Most of those items discussed in the MOU, we expect actions and like you know, it requires funding. So if they are claiming that fuel subsidy is gone, no issues around that. They have also told us they were spending an average of N400billion monthly on subsidy.
“Going by our calculations, savings of approximately an average of N400 billion have already been done, and if we have that savings, we expect that issues around provisions of CNG buses will be settled, payment of N25,000 to fifteen million families, and N35,000 wage grant to workers in the federal civil services on treasury payroll.
“All issues that were discussed in the MOU we expect to be resolved or actions commenced to begin to resolve those issues. Where actions are not taken to begin to resolve them, we will commence strike action at the end of the 30 days suspension which has been signed as MOU.
“We are hopeful that the federal government should be responsible enough to make that happen, if that does not happen it means labour would be left with no option than to lift suspension on the strike action and commence strike without notice.”
