The Nigerian Senate says it will make the demands of the organised labour its terms of reference with the aim of addressing and dispatching them with the urgency they deserve.
Senator Ali Ndume, who is also the Chief Whip of the Senate, made the promised when he received the protesting members of the organised labour who were at the National Assembly to deliver their letter of demands to the Legislature.
Senator Ndume who received the workers along with other Senators, commended the Nigerian Labour Congress NLC and the Trade Union Congress (TUC), for the peaceful way they conducted themselves during their nationwide protest and rally.
He appealed to the workers to suspend their action and give the Senate seven days to intervene and interface with other arms of government regarding their demands adding that if labour is not satisfied with the Senate’s progress within the stipulated time, it should resume its protest and rally.
“We in the National Assembly are your representatives…we have a problem in this country and the problem is both ways and we have to commit to solving the problems ourselves.
“The National Assembly especially the Senate has been following keenly what is going on, when we realized that there was breakdown in the discussion between the Presidency and the NLC, day before yesterday, one of our colleagues brought a motion on this labour crisis that we are facing and the need for the Senate to intervene”, he said.
He said that the Senate understands the agitations of the organised labour as contained in their demands, but insisted that every Nigerian as a stakeholder must work together to address the problems, saying that none of the issues are insurmountable, including fixing the refineries.
Submitting their letter of demands to the Senate, Presidents of the Nigeria Labour Congress, Joe Ajaero and the Trade Union Congress, Festus Osifor, said that the nation-wide rally and protest was workers way of expressing their grievances with the happening in the polity.
Read Also: House of Representatives appeals to NLC to Halt Protest
They said that the stalemate of their discussions and negotiations with the government was as a result of poor representation on the government team as well as the government not bringing anything promising to the workers on the table.
Reading the content of their letter to the Senate, NLC President, Joe Ajaero, called on the federal government to reverse what he called “anti-poor policies including the recent hike in PMS, school fees and VAT, pay University Lecturers their eight months outstanding salaries, fixing the nations refineries as well as immediate implementation in good faith of the resolutions with Congress jointly signed with government and TUC”, among others.
Labour also wants the government to look into the leveraging abundant natural gas that it said the country is blessed with as alternative to petrol, as to reduce the nation’s dependency on oil.
“An agreement was reached on CNG, Compressed Natural Gas. Nigeria has a large deposit of gas that could last for the next five hundred years and by our last assessment in 2020, a litre could cost as much as ninety naira, but in current rate, it would not cost more than one naira, fifty kobo.
“That was the agreement we signed with the government, that we should explore the CNG option as an alternative instead of forcing every Nigerian to buy at 600-640 naira,” Ajaero said.
Adding his voice, the President of the TUC, Festus Osifo, said that for any meaningful progress to be made, government must deliberately cut down the cost of governance at all levels.
Labour said that it will review the rally of today, Wednesday as well as the appeal by the Senate and take a decision on its next course of action.
The nationwide rally is the first phase of the actions planned by the workers representatives to drive home their demands.
The rally in Abuja also took the protesters to the Federal Ministry of Justice.
