Fuel Subsidy: Informal sector workers demand social protection

INFORMAL sector workers in the country have raised alarm over removal of subsidy on petroleum product, saying it will worsen their burden and hardships.

Under the aegis of Federation of Informal Workers of Nigeria, FIWON the workers demanded for social protection, lamenting they have been always excluded from any safety nets.

Speaking General Secretary of FIWON, Comrade Gbenga Komolafe, said the estimated 55 million working people toiling in the Nigerian informal economy viewed with dismay and disappointment with government removal of subsidy even against popular opposition.

According to him, “The allocation of N161.4 billion to power sector, a mere 3.4 per cent of the total expenditure, would suggest that the obvious need for major investments in the power sector has been transferred completely to the ‘private sector’.

While there might be legitimate expectation of private funds into this critical sector in view of the ‘reform’ policies directly designed to invite such investments, it is obvious that what has been allocated is not sufficient to even provide some of the major rehabilitations of the sector to make it ‘attractive’ to the much hyped private investment.

The tariff increase on wheat flour to 100 per cent and on rice to 50 per cent as contained in the 2012 budget, in the guise of encouraging the use of cassava flour for bread baking is no doubt going to make bread completely unaffordable to most Nigerians.

While it is valid to seek for self reliance and local food sufficiency to guarantee national food security and employment, it is plain that much concerted effort is needed to carefully plan such policy in order not to inflict insufferable pain on most people. ”

“Everywhere in the world, ‘social safety net’ or social protection programmes are designed to bridge gaps in social infrastructural provisioning and take care of those left out in the margins of society such as orphans, the unemployed, the disabled and the aged. Thus in Botswana, Namibia, Mauritius and South Africa, there are comprehensive social protection programmes including Child Support Programmes for children from indigent homes, Child care Grants for orphans, social pension for the aged, and disability grants for the disabled.

Lesotho and Seychelles have introduced universal pension schemes, while Cape Verde, Liberia and Swaziland, among others have introduced mean tested old age pension schemes. Ghana, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, Uganda, Zambia have initiated pilot programmes to extend cash transfers to the elderly and vulnerable. This is in consonance with local and international obligations to take care of society’s vulnerable.

Convention 102 of the International Labour Organization (ILO) and Article 25 of the United Nation’s Charter on Human Rights converge with Nigerian Constitution Section 16(2 d), which provides for ‘… suitable and adequate shelter, suitable and adequate food, reasonable national minimum living wage, old age care and pensions, and unemployment, sick benefits and welfare of the disabled are provided for all citizens’. Nowhere has road and rail construction, power, refineries, urban mass transit schemes even vocational training referred to as ‘social safety net.”