INFORMAL sector workers in the country have warned that the removal of subsidy on petroleum products would kill the sector, while declaring the 2012 budget proposal by the Federal Government as anti- people.

Under the aegis of the Federation of Informal Workers of Nigeria, FIWON lamented that they were conspicuously excluded from the budget.

Analyzing the budget proposal, General Secretary of FIWON, Comrade Gbenga Komolafe, said the estimated 55 million Nigerians toiling in the informal economy were disappointed by the Federal Government’s indifference to the plight of the masses if the fuel subsidy is removed, adding that even the 2012 budget gives no hope for a reprieve.

According to him, “At a time when most Nigerians clamour for a more balanced and equitable public spending through a major restructuring of the budgeting architecture that would give priority to physical and social infrastructural provisioning, what we are presented with are a marginal reduction in recurrent expenditure from 74.4% to 72% and a prioritisation that defy logic.

“With a paltry 28% of the budget outlay committed to capital expenditure and the vast bulk of this percentage committed to ‘security’, it would appear that the federal government has abdicated all responsibility towards infrastructure provisioning.

The budget presentation and subsequent analysis has not shown any clear response to the demands of the Academic Staff of Union of Universities (ASUU) for government to significantly increase funding for education, while provision for healthcare will merely scratch the surface of the decay and malfunction that have bedeviled public healthcare system in the country.