VICE President of Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, and Chairman of Labour Transport Company, LTC, Comrade Issa Aremu, has faulted the Federal Government on alleged planned to 450 and 150 buses to the NLC and the Trade Union Congress of Nigeria, TUC out of the 1,242 buses to be imported.

Comrade Aremu in a statement argued that while Labour and indeed all Nigerians recognised the need for mass transit scheme as one critical success factors in good governance beyond the current subsidy issue, but much more important was the urgent need to reinvent the Railway system.

According to him “labour supports every genuine effort at ensuring national sustainable transport service delivery. However, labour does not subscribe to feverish top-down ‘bus allocation’ that is not a product of genuine dialogue and part of comprehensive programme of transport service delivery.

“The Federal Government under its SURE-programme promised to make fund available for reputable Transport operators (of which NLC’s Labour Transport Company, LTC is one) and not necessarily to procure and dump buses to operators.”

“The correct approach should be that all genuine transport operators including LTC should exercise their right to source and procure their own buses while the Federal Government makes fund available at zero per cent interest as promised, within the context of an overall national mass transit transport policy.

“The Labour Transport Company was one “beneficiary” of such Federal Government’s ‘bus allocation’ scheme in the past with disastrous consequences and would not want to thread this path to service failure again! President Jonathan’s transformation agenda must get things done differently.

“Labour would prefer to make its bus requirements and specifications available to the Federal Government after due consultations including consultations going on within Justice Belgore Committee as well as Kolade committee.”