By Victor Ahiuma-Young

NLC: The NLC made itself unavailable for interview  for reasons best known to it. Several appointments for interview were not honoured.

TUC: President of Trade Union Congress of Nigeria, TUC, Bobboi Kaigama, said in last two years, the socio-economic environments in the country have been frustrating.

He told Vanguard, “like we said during the May Day celebration, our economy is almost comatose, there collapse of infrastructure, failure of government to diversify the economy, insecurity, weak naira, depletion of external reserve, among others. Our economy is sick so our priorities must be right. If we miss it now we may never get it right again.”

Kaigama, decried the state of the manufacturing sector, lamenting that the challenges in the sector wes compounded by lack of power. He said, “Information available to us from our affiliates is that there is no company that currently spends less than half a billion naira to power their plants in a month. Diesel now sells for between N250 and N300 per litre depending on where you are buying from. Those that could not sustain their businesses have left the shores of the country but their products still flood our markets. The food and beverages sector had in its employ millions of workers until recently when the issue of violation of collective agreement and redundancy arising from forex problems, etc became the order of the day.

“Employers of labour have become politicians and hardly adhere to agreements. They take advantage of workers at every slight opportunity, like this one provided by recession. It is our thinking that the fact that there is a little drop in profit margin is not a criterion to lay off committed workers. Between July 2015 and now the senior staff of the food and beverages union has lost thousands of workers to an already over-saturated labour market.

“At its peak, the textile sector provided direct jobs to close to half a million Nigerians and millions of indirect jobs. Sadly, over 90 per cent core investors have since gone into importation.    We will be glad if government can do for the industry what it has done in the power sector by making solid arrangement to sell gas to this industry at the same rate it is selling to the Discos since they both require this commodity for production. The Footwear and Leather industry is combating with the challenges of influx of fake tyres from China and fairly used ones. The development possesses a great risk to the masses, who are daily on the roads.

Pulp and Paper Industries

“According to Federal Road Safety Corps, FRSC, a total of 4,005 deaths in 7,657 crashes was recorded at the end of week 47 of 2016. Fake tyres contributed to it, and we urge government to assist through policies to curb further closure of companies. The same evil that befell the textile, food and beverages, footwear and leather sectors have since befallen the pharmaceutical as well as the chemical, aviation and iron and steel sectors, etc. Reports have it that despite billions of naira so far spent on Aladja, Katsina and Ajaokuta they are yet to fully come on stream.

NLC

The Pulp and Paper Industries at Jebba, Iwopin and Oku-Iboku have all long been abandoned and forgotten despite several appeals to government. It is not a plus that 21st century Nigeria still imports paper even with all the trees all over the country.

“Similarly, the insurance and banking sector has not had it so good either. Its tales have been that of meltdown and carelessness on the part of management. The management kicks against unionization and makes the workers look like the evil bedeviling the sector. There is the aspect of policy inconsistency on the part of the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, and the Federal Ministry of Finance, which have stagnated the nation’s economic growth and hindered investment. To turn the nation’s economy around government must as a matter of urgency tackle the issue of forex and crash in the value of naira.

“TUC also brings to  the fore the unnecessary, unreasonable and unreachable targets our financial sector workers are being made to undertake in an economy where the financial sector is contracting by government policy. If justifiable in the past, it is no longer tenable consequent upon introduction of TSA Policy where governments’, agencies’ as well as parastatals’ funds are being ware-housed with Central Bank of Nigeria, leaving only private funds for commercial banks to manage. It is, therefore, impossible to meet set target and in fact it is turning our bankers and other financial workers into victims of money bags. The banking sector should, therefore, be sanitized to make room for decent financial system.

“In the midst of all these, we are confronted with the issue of unpaid entitlements of workers which has remained unaddressed for some years now. It should be noted that the debts owed Federal workers include promotion arrears outstanding in some cases since 2007; first 28 days in lieu of hotel accommodation; and Duty Tour Allowance (DTA). Others are mandatory training allowance in 2010, burial expenses, etc.

“The Trade Union Congress wants to use this occasion to appeal to the Federal Government for the umpteenth time to pay these arrears and other allowances owed federal public servants immediately to boost their morale and by extension increase the level of productivity in the Public Service. In the same vein, we are faced with delay in payment of salaries by the Federal Government. As at today, a good number of MDAs including some Unity Colleges nation-wide are still being owed salaries for some months in 2016/17.”

ULC

General Secretary of United Labour Congress of Nigeria, ULC, Comrade Didi Adodo: “The high hope we had at the inception of this administration in 2015, is giving way to increasing despair given the mounting deprivations and sufferings that Nigerian workers and masses are facing. The most harrowing is the fact of the seeming hopelessness of it all. Every passing day, Nigerians wake up to the news of the screws getting tighter in the midst of apparent confusion and near absence of direction among the leaders whose duty it is to engage the situation creatively in order to see the nation out of the morass.

“Basic food items and household goods are becoming increasingly inaccessible to average Nigerian families. This has made life and living very unbearable for majority of the citizenry. Nigerians now walk the streets looking forlorn as poverty has brazenly taken over our roads. Nigerians need to see actions on the ground and not intentions and talk shops. It is the concrete steps that the people see that will rekindle hope and helps the people stand together as a collective to wither this economic storm. The people want to know how the galloping inflation is being handled. They want to see new jobs or a guarantee that the spate of job losses have ceased. They want to see rice, gari, beverages and utilities especially electricity functioning and within their reach.

“We urge the government to make the economy work for the poor masses and workers of this nation and stop the present cornering of the national resources by a few greedy individuals thus closing the economic space against the suffering majority. It is only economic programmes that are pro-poor and pro-workers that are capable of driving our nation out of recession because, when these segment of the nation is empowered, purchasing power increases expanding aggregate demands which in turn causes a reduction in manufacturing inventories and stimulates further growth that drives the wheel of our economic progress. We make bold to say that, Spending on the workers and the poor is the only way out of recession.

“President Buhari actually created hope for Nigeria. Hope in the sense that the federal government has really done well. Initially the government was slow both in decisions and appointments.   When you say this government, federal government has its own employees, states also have their employees, local governments have their employees, private sector has its own employees. In the area of the federal government employees, President Buhari has tried to make sure salaries are paid as at when due. State governors have been very unserious apart from few states that have paid up to date.

Internal revenue generation

“Many of them still owe and I know that Buhari’s government has warned those governors to pay and the federal government has released bail out to them. I will not ascribe their refusal to pay workers to Buhari. When we look at local government workers, most of them are not being paid. Our government should look into internal revenue generation  and in that area, Buhari has not done well. We cannot always depend on oil. They should encourage big factories.

“In the area of sustainability of jobs, without electricity it is difficult and that is why Buhari’s government must look at electricity very seriously. The government should take it as a priority and declare an emergency on power. Because of power problem, factories are not producing as they ought to and when factories are not producing, the tendency to look at their cost is there. The first casualty is job reduction. Buhari’s government has not been able to create jobs as they promised. Rather, the government is looking at social security. The solution is that factories should work. The government should take bold steps to address the challenges confronting the manufacturing sector.”