The Federal Government has scheduled a meeting with the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and the Trade Union Congress (TUC) on Friday over the recent hike in the pump price of petroleum products. The meeting was earlier scheduled for tomorrow but had to be moved to Friday to enable the leaders of labour unions who are currently attending the 26th Annual International Labour Conference holding in Geneva, Switzerland, arrive home for the parley.
The Senate President, David Mark, has however, assured that the face-off over the price increase would be resolved peacefully.
This is coming even as the leadership of the trade union bodies called on the federal government to sanction the Executive Secretary of the Petroleum Product Pricing Regulatory Authority (PPPRA), Dr. Oluwole Oluleye, over the handling of the fuel price increase.
Speaking to Labour correspondents at the ILO conference in Geneva yesterday, the President of TUC, Mr. Peter Eselle said the government has called on labour for negotiations to thrash out issues connected to the increase in fuel price, VAT and non-implementation of 15% wage increase for workers.
He said labour had held an exploratory meeting with government last Thursday where they placed their demands on the table and government also made its own input.
On whether Labour would accept the resolution of the fuel price issue based on government’s consideration of the Senator Ibrahim Mantu’s Palliative Committee report, Esele said the unions would be demanding the complete reversal to the old price of N65 per a litre before any other thing.
“We will have to insist that the meeting first looked into how the current increase in fuel price was arrived at. We have PPPRA which was saddled with the statutory responsibility to deal with matters relating to adjustments in fuel price. However, what I can tell you is that as a member of the PPPRA board there never a time when it was agreed that price of PMS would be raised. So procedurally the increase in fuel price was wrong and whether we are going to talk about palliative or not that procedural error has to corrected,” he said.
He said the two unions in the petroleum industry, National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas workers (NUPENG) and the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association (PENGASSAN), were not against the privatization of the refineries but that government failed to adhere to agreed guidelines.
He said it was agreed in a memoradum of understanding between the workers union and the Bureau for Public Enterprise (BPE) that only 51% of governments stake be sold while the other 49% be held by the Nigerian National Petroleum Cooperation (NNPC) out of which 10% would be reserved for the workers.
In Lagos, the Senate President said the Senate would ensure peaceful resolution of the standoff. He said though, the Senate is currently on recess, Senators as individuals have been speaking to various government agencies concerned with the problem and when it reconvenes, the Senate will advise the Federal Government to dialogue with Labour and end ensuing crisis that may lead to instability to the new government by averting the planned industrial action on June 18.
Mark spoke with journalists at the Murtala Muhammed Airport on his way to former President, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo�s home at Ota, Ogun state. Mark also said that the new Senate will not lose sight of its responsibilities to the people of Nigeria, adding that they intend to make a difference and are ready to co-operate with other arms of government to work together to actualize the goal of bettering the lives of the citizenry.
Jun132007