FG plans to form pro-subsidy labour union –NLC

The Nigeria Labour Congress has alleged that the Federal Government was making moves to divide the congress in its bid to further increase the pump price of fuel in the country.

The NLC, through its General Secretary, Mr. Owei Lakemfa, therefore called on President Goodluck Jonathan to moves to cause crisis in the NLC.

Lakemfa alleged that government officials had come to the conclusion that the best way to deal with the influence of the NLC was to engineer a strife with a view to registering a labour centre and using same (centre) to support unpopular policies.

He said that officials whose identities he did not disclose, had fixed July 2012 as the date for the registration of the labour centre.

He said the same officials were responsible for the preparation of an anti labour bill before the National Assembly.

According to him, the bill seeks to ensure that votes of all workers were taken before strikes could be called.

“The NLC finds it quite necessary to draw President Jonathan’s attention to moves by functionaries of his administration to create avoidable labour and political crises in the country by seeking to break up the Congress and impose a new regime of fuel price hike on the country.

“These hawks in government who see the NLC as being too powerful and capable of checkmating undemocratic and unpatriotic moves by the political class, have come to the conclusion that the best way out is to engineer internal ‘disagreements’ in the NLC, and hiding under this guise, to register a new labour centre which they hope will use to support anti-people policies and cause distractions in the Labour movement.

“These government agents have even fixed July 2012 as the registration date of their proposed new labour centre.

“These agents who are also responsible for the anti-labour bill currently before the National Assembly are myopic as they do not realise that the NLC is a major buffer against any unconstitutional or anti democratic bid for power in the country.

“The NLC and its allies will put the working people on the alert for a struggle to stop this move.”

He urged the President to prevail on the officials to stop the renewed bid to increase the pump price in the guise of implementing a policy of deregulation, whose shortcomings had been seriously exposed by the probe conducted by the House of Representative.

He described the media campaigns for fuel price increase, town hall meetings and moves to entice the youth in the country as a criminal waste of funds that should have been put into better use.

The labour leader said the President must call his appointees to order and prevent them from heating up the polity.

When our correspondent contacted the Minister of Labour, Chief Emeka Wogu, he denied the allegation.

He challenged the NLC to disclose the source of its information as the Ministry of Labour and Productivity which had the responsibility to register trade unions knew nothing about the plot.

“It is false, it is totally false. I am not aware of it. The NLC should tell us the source of their information. Who registers trade unions? Is it not my ministry? There is no such plan, I wonder where they got their information from,” the minister said.