Bimbola Oyesola
The Trade Union Congress (TUC) yesterday, joined other Nigerians to condemn the recent pump price increase, stating it will further impoverish Nigerians.
The TUC in a statement by its President, Quadri Olaleye, said labour’s next line of action will be determined in few days.
“In a few days, the various committees involving government and the organised labour will brief labour and civil society and the outcome of that meeting will determine our next line of action,” he said.
He said that TUC is surprised that despite effort made by the Organised Labour in the last meeting with the Federal Government on hike in fuel price and electricity tariff, the latter still went ahead to further impoverish Nigerians with the recent increase.
“This is one increase, too many. Indeed, a violation of all understandings we have had with government,” he said. Olaleye recalled that at the meeting, government had appealed that subsidy removal was the only way out, else the economy will collapse and there would be massive job losses, based on which labour agreed with them to save the economy and jobs.
He said, “If the government claims to have “deregulated” the downstream sector of the oil and gas (which of course is subsidy removal), it therefore means the independent oil marketers are importing petrol at their own cost. “Information at our disposal, however, is that no independent marketer is importing fuel, because they cannot access dollars. The Nigeria National Petroleum Corporations (NNPC) is still holding on to that monopoly.”
The TUC President stated that to make matters worse, it is the NNPC that instructed the latest increase and not Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPRA).
