Following the suspended strike by the labour leaders, Mele Kyari, the Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, (NNPC) has assured that the NNPC would diligently implement the agreement reached between them and Federal Government.
It would be recalled that the Nigeria Labour Congress and the Trade Union Congress had threatened to embark on industrial action over the Federal Government’s refusal to reverse the hike in electricity tariff and fuel pump price on Monday.
However, after a marathon meeting with the FG on Sunday, the organized labour suspended its planned nationwide industrial action for two weeks; an action Kyari deemed laudable.
In terms of the agreements reached at the meeting, it was agreed that the NNPC would expedite the rehabilitation of the nation’s four refineries located in Port Harcourt, Warri and Kaduna and to achieve 50 per cent completion for Port Harcourt by December 2021, while timelines and delivery for Warri and Kaduna will be established by the inclusive Steering Committee.
On the issue of electricity tariff reforms, the parties to set up a Technical Committee comprising Ministries, Departments, Agencies, NLC and TUC, which will work for a duration of two weeks effective from Monday, September 28.
Kyari after the meeting took to his twitter handle and tweeted: “We reached an accord to suspend the planned strike action, great responsibility for both government and Labour, all serving the common good, beneficial challenge for NNPC; we will follow through diligently”.
Exerpts from the tweet: “Being a former Union leader, I understand the difficulties of Labour leadership when faced with choices between stark realities and legitimate follower expectations. The leadership chose the pursuit of common good and posterity will vindicate us all for standing with our country.
“NLC and TUC demonstrated absolute faith in our country and showed understanding on the inevitability of PMS deregulation and jointly charted a way forward to secure local refining sufficiency through greater stakeholder inclusiveness and transparency. We will follow through diligently.”
When the subsidy was removed, it led to an increase in electricity tariff from about N30.23 to about N62.33 per kWh, while the price of petrol was skyrocketed from about N145 to about N161 per litre.
InlandTown! 2020
