The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), says it will shut down the economy without giving any notice to the government if the petrol pump price is increased again.
Its President, Joe Ajaero, gave the warning on Monday in Abuja while responding to the advice of the Director, Trade Union Services, Ministry of Labour and Employment, Emmanuel Igbinosun, that Labour should explore due process in its agitations before embarking on strike.
He said Nigerians had suffered enough from the policies of government and would not take kindly any increase in petroleum pump price that would worsen the situation.
He pleaded that the bad economic policies by the state that make workers’ wages next to nothing should be checked.
Ajaero added that if the bad economic policies that led to inflation and the devaluation of the currency are checked, Nigerian workers would be comfortable, even with the current minimum wage.
His words: “If naira is at par with dollar today, we will ask you to leave the minimum wage at N30,000, it will make sense. If inflation is checked to zero, we will ask you to leave it where we are but if inflation is flying, if even by the admittance of the Nigeria Bureau of Statistics, we have over 130 million Nigerians that are multi-dimensionally poor. I think you should address those issues.
“If we go for even wage increase tomorrow, the inflation that will come up will destroy it.
“As we are here now, they are contemplating increasing the pump price of petrol and the Ministry of Labour for sometime now, will only go to the Ministry of Justice to come up with so-called injunction to hold the hands of Labour not to respond.
“I didn’t want to say some of those things you will not be comfortable with because probably if they ask you to represent them tomorrow, you will not be around.
“But let me say this, Nigerian workers will not give any notice if we have not addressed the consequences of the last two increases and we wake up from our sleep to hear that they have tampered with the prices again. They have started floating ideas of a likely increase in the pump price of petrol.”