By Harry Awurumibe, Editor, Abuja Bureau
The no love lost between labour unions and the federal government has taken a new twist as the delegations of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and Trade Union Congress (TUC) on Friday evening in Aso Rock, stormed out of a scheduled meeting with the government team over the recent removal of petrol subsidy.
PROMPT NEWS reports that this was to be fourth the time the two sides would be meeting as the government-appointed Presidential Steering Committee on Subsidy Removal Palliatives try to resolve the grievances of labour unions concerning the hike in petrol and other prices of essential items following the subsidy removal.
But the meeting was aborted as the President of NLC, Joe Ajaero, and General Secretary of TUC, Nuhu Toro who led the labour teams arrived the Villa for the Friday meeting and could only see the Special Adviser to the President on Energy, Ms. Olu Veighjein, who was representing the Federal Government.
At this juncture, the labour leaders left the venue claiming not to see a high ranking federal government official around for the parley to hold.
It was gathered that the labour delegation had challenges gaining entry to the State House, Abuja where the meeting was scheduled to hold, and which had hosted three previous meetings over the negotiations.
It was also learnt that the labour leaders had complained that they were kept waiting for a long while at the State House main entrance gate as their names were reportedly not on the visitors list for security clearance.
They later made it to the usual venue, conference room of the Chief of Staff to the President, Femi Gbajabiamila, who was however, not present, but was said to have earlier been around waiting for the labour union leaders to arrive, while the misunderstanding at the entrance gate lasted.
Nonetheless, the meeting went into closed doors but surprisingly ended a few minutes afterwards when the angry labour unions officials came out of the venue and declined to speak officially to journalists as they had done on previous occasions. READ ALSO:
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However, one them who declined to be named, was heard lamenting that “they (FG) are using cover to deceive Nigerians. They are supposed to be three sub-committees – Mass Transit sub-committee, the CNG (Compressed Natural Gas), and the Cash Transfer – to brief us, the steering committee but government was not prepared for the meeting.
“In their introductory remarks they made excuses and they wanted the meeting to continue but the meeting did not form a quorum.
“If there is no quorum, we are a people that operate on the basis of process. So, if there’s no quorum in a meeting what do you do? You will adjourn for lack of quorum.
“There was nobody to meet with. The Chief of Staff was not there, they are taking us like small children.”
No official statement had been issued by the presidency at the time of this report.
