Fuel Subsidy Palliative: Angry Labour leaders walk out of meeting venue with FG

The dialogue between the organized Labour body and Federal Government FG Friday on removal of fuel subsidy and demand for palliatives and other related issues hit a brick wall Friday, as the labour leaders stormed out of the meeting venue. 

The parley was supposed to hold at the presidential villa, but quorum was not formed.

The President of Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Joe Ajaero and Trade Union Congress TUC, Alex Usifo were among the labour leaders present at the venue of the aborted meeting.

Recall that the Presidential Steering Committee on subsidy had scheduled to meet yesterday, in order to draw outline for a palliative scheme to cushion the effects of the fuel subsidy remov­al.

 Ajaero led a labour dele­gation to the Chief of Staff’s office, venue of the meeting at about 5pm.

However,  when he observed that the government team was not on ground to meet with them, they walked away angrily.

The Steering Committee meeting had earlier met with the government delega­tion Wednesday where the two parties agreed to reconvene Friday to get brief from the three sub-committees set up to look into various demands.

The labour union accused FG of us­ing the meetings as a pretext to deceive Nigerians.

A source at the meeting con­firmed that three subcommit­tees, the Mass Transit, the Com­pressed Natural Gas (CNG) and Cash Transfer subcommittees, were supposed to be present to brief the Steering Committee on the measures put in place to cushion the effect of the fuel subsidy removal on the work­ers.

However, Ajaero complained that government officials, who are members of the subcommit­tees, were nowhere to be found.