The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has warned that it would give fresh ultimatum before the next strike in 30 days if the federal government did not keep to its current agreement with them.
TheHintsNews reports that both the NLC and Trade Union Congress (TUC) had suspended its planned indefinite strike on Monday night after deciding to accept the proposal from the federal government.
The suspension of the planned nationwide strike followed the signing of a 15-point Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the two main labour centres and the federal government.
Its National President, Joe Ajaero, while speaking on ARISE News Channel on Tuesday said NLC initially decided to return to the negotiating table after shunning all talks with the government due to pressure from many Nigerians, who also raised issues about the likely negative effect the proposed strike would have on the underprivileged and vulnerable countrymen and women.
He maintained that the industrial action was prompted by mass suffering following the removal of fuel subsidy and the crisis in foreign exchange market and its ripple effect on Nigerian workers.
He words: “When we had the first meeting with them, we went back to our organs. And even when our ultimatum expired, we still went back. That’s where we draw our power and mandate.
“If at the end of the one month, for all that was agreed, we are not satisfied, we will get back to the same organs and get a fresh mandate because it’s important that we understand that an activity that was suspended is not called off.
“We do not need to give a fresh ultimatum. We will go back and re-evaluate what we have achieved and the level of compliance and efforts made so far in ensuring that the agreements are honoured.”
Ajaero stressed that enough time had been given to the President Bola Tinubu administration to take appropriate action to cushion the suffering in the country and avoidable deaths among the masses occasioned by the harsh economy, but the government continued to ignore labour.
He was of the opinion that if the political will actually existed, the Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) buses should have been ready, while salary awards and the promised cash transfer ought to have been implemented.
The labour leader stressed that the results of the CNG programme, for instance, should have been trickling in by November, adding that this was clearly stated in the agreement that had not been implemented.
“On the issue of refineries, what we said was that there would be a joint visitation to the Port Harcourt refinery to look at the state of preparedness for it to be in operation by December,” he noted.