WORRIED by the Federal Government’s alleged refusal to increase workers’ salaries as demanded during the May Day celebration, the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) on Thursday threatened to confront the President Umaru Yar’Adua led-government to obtain a significant wage increase.
The congress gave an indication during its National Executive Council (NEC) meeting in Kano that it was set for a nationwide strike to get the government to increase workers’ salaries, eight years after the present minimum wage was fixed by the then President Olusegun Obasanjo government with a signed agreement that there would be a yearly increase of 12.5 per cent and 15 per cent respectively.
Already, the NLC has called on all workers to be prepared for a long strike in the new year to get a desired salary increase, even while they were waiting for the government to respond to their demand.
“While awaiting the Federal Government’s response to our demand for negotiations on these, we call on workers all over the country to be prepared for a sustained struggle to obtain these wage increase,” the NLC President, Comrade Abdulwahed Omar, said at the opening of the NEC meeting, held at Mambayya House, Kano.
The congress has also demanded for N52, 200 as the new minimum wage for workers, saying that the 2008 increase in the compensation of political office holders has further aggravated the disparity between the workers’ salaries and of political office holders.
In a report by the NLC Secretariat to the NEC meeting released late last night, the congress said: “Based on the foregoing explanation and justification, congress wishes to demand for a new national minimum wage of N52, 200, which is the approximate average derived under the three approaches used.
“Our demand is for the Federal Government to set up as a matter of urgency, a tripartite committee to negotiate and agree on this, so that the National Minimum Wage Act 2000 will be amended to reflect the new amount. The National Minimum Wage Law should apply to any establishment employing 20 or more workers instead of the 50 workers currently stipulated by law.”
According to the President, “the Congress has recently submitted to the Federal Government a comprehensive memorandum on our collective demand for the review of the national minimum wage and general salary review.
“To us, the minimum wage fixed eight years ago is no longer tenable nor have the 12.5 per cent and 15 per cent wage adjustments sufficiently shielded the worker from spiralling inflation and ever poorer standard of living.”
He added: “We do not doubt that parts of the elite would want to use the global economic downturn as an excuse to deny workers their rights. But workers cannot be held responsible for the profligate nature of our elite who in the last nine years have squandered the country’s unimaginable income from oil which they fritter away in the name of ‘excess crude’.”
On the prices of petroleum products, Comrade Omar said the Federal Government should also consider reduction in pump prices due largely to the sharp reduction in the price of crude oil at the international market.
He pointed out that the government had, whenever the price of oil went up at the international market, placed the argument before Nigerians that the international market price would always determine the local price of fuel, and thus always on such occasion, increase the prices.
The NLC President said: “Against the background of the current economic meltdown and the collapse of oil prices, the government has adopted a tone of austerity measure without saying so. We hope that the burden of this policy would not be shifted onto the shoulders of Nigerian workers.
“It is important to note that whenever oil prices go up, government raises the prices of petroleum products under the guise of removing so-called subsidy, but now that the prices have gone down, it is not considering a similar decrease in the prices of the petroleum products in the Nigerian market.”
He said the congress received the news of Alhaji Rilwanu Lukman’s coming back to the Ministry of Petroleum Resources with mixed feelings, adding, “while we do not doubt the depth of Alhaji Lukman’s experience in the petroleum sector, we are concerned that he is bringing into the ministry the stale tale of the deregulation of the petroleum sector.
“The massive collapse of market forces globally ought to have persuaded our policy makers to look at other alternatives for our developmental aspirations. We in the labour movement are convinced that as long as we are not willing to do what our other OPEC colleagues are doing, and doing successfully, we will not get out of our economic and energy crisis.”
In another development, the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) may have sacked no fewer than 9,000 staff members in order to realise the nation’s dream on ports’ concessioning, NPA Managing Director, Mallam Abdul Salamm Mohammed, has revealed.
Addressing an audience of experts in Djibouti, Lesotho, in respect of the nation’s efforts towards bringing the country’s ports industry to compete favourably with its peers elsewhere, the NPA boss said the figure was not inclusive of about 13,000 dock workers who were also disengaged and paid severance benefits, in a bid to ensure industrial harmony, before handing them over to the new terminal operators.
Mr. Mohammed, who indicated that the re-organisation was on the strength of the 2001 World Bank initiative and the Federal Government advice, based on diagnostic studies by Royal Haskonning/Dynamar and Challenge groups, said that the country also expended not less than $400 million on severance packages.
He identified some of the benefits that the country was currently reaping as a result of ports concessioning to include improved revenue base arising from reduced vessel waiting time; reduced cargo dwell time, improved berth occupancy, improved security, especially on cargoes, as well as a general increase of cargo through-put.
“Twenty five numbers of amortised projects are presently at various stages of completion; with a total value of the projects now at over $496.11 million,” he stated, adding that areas covered by the projects included road construction, berthing facilities, dredging of channels and storage facilities.
Emphasising that those who were sacked were made to realise that they were making a national sacrifice, the NPA boss observed that the effort had also attracted a Build Operate and Transfer (BOT) project from the Port and Terminal Multiservices Ltd (PTML) to developing a green field of Roro Berth on a two-year arrangement with a total value of $87, 400,000, with the main project costing $62.4 million and the rest being spent on additional work of dredging and land reclamation, on a second phase basis.