Strike Notice: Agreements Reached With Labour Can’t Be Implemented At Once – FG

The federal government has responded to the strike notice of the Organised Labour, stating that some of the agreements reached with its members during the October 2023 negotiation meeting cannot be implemented at once.

Naija News recalls that the leaders of organised labour and government representatives entered into a Memorandum of Understanding on October 2, 2023, after a 16-point agreement was reached.

The agreement was for the government to address the suffering of the masses resulting from fuel subsidy removal and find a lasting solution to the devaluation of the naira, inflation, insecurity, among others.

Expressing their dissatisfaction with how the government was handling the issue, members of organised labour declared that they would begin a nationwide strike in the next 14 days starting from February 9, 2024, if those agreements were not implemented.

In response, while addressing journalists in Abuja on Friday, the Minister of State for Labour and Employment, Nkeiruka Onyejeocha said the FG had commenced the delivery of some agreements, maintaining that not all can be implemented immediately.

She noted that one of the agreements, which is setting up conversion centres for Compressed Natural Gas (CNG), would take some time before it materialised, stressing that the committee handling it had gone far.

She said, “These agreements, all of them are not going to be done the same day. Some can’t be done in two, three or four months. Like the CNG, it is a process that’s ongoing, and I’ve just told Nigerians what the CNG group has been doing in the last four months.

“We’ve commenced deliveries on those agreements. We’ve been reaching out to the organised labour because the President is committed to these agreements, he has good faith, that’s why we don’t want anybody to shut down the economy at any time because it will affect everybody.

“It’s like you want to pull down the whole roof of a house, meanwhile, you’re still inside the roof. We’re not shying away from implementing the agreements we’ve entered with the organised labour.”

Onyejeocha disclosed that the government, through the Ministry of Finance, procured up to 11,500 CNG vehicles, including buses and tricycles, which would be rolled out by President Bola Tinubu soon.

She added, “In line with the government ongoing commitment to improving the welfare of Nigerians, provisions have also been made for an initial 55,000 CNG conversion kits as part of the commencement of the auto gas conversion programme.

“Development of the state-of-the-art CNG conversion centres nationwide is also ongoing with the aim to deliver 1 million converted bi-fuel CNG/PMS vehicles to enable transporters and mass transit operators convert their vehicles that run on PMS to gas (which is forty to fifty percent cheaper than PMS).”