The Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, said on Thursday that with the new price for Premium Motor Spirit, popularly called petrol, the gains of the yet-to-be implemented N70,000 new national minimum wage have been eroded.
Organized labour will meet with the federal government to see how workers could cope with the difficulty that the development has presented.
Speaking at the opening ceremony of a two-day workshop on “Minimum Wage Implementation Workshop, Southern Zone, with the theme ‘Strategies for Effective Implementation of the 2024 National Minimum Wage Act, in Lagos,” President of the NLC, Joe Ajaero, insisted that President Bola Tinubu hoodwinked organised labour into accepting the N70,000 minimum wage to avert an increase in petrol prices.
Ajaero appealed to the government to address the acute hunger, poverty and dissatisfaction of Nigerians before things got out of hand, regretting their suffering.
On his discussions with President Tinubu before the N70,000 minimum wage deal, the NLC president lamented that Nigerians appeared to have begun to get accustomed to the situation on the ground because the government had been distracting organised labour.
“There is a tactic to distract our attention, to call us names, level allegations against us over cybercrime, financing terrorism, sponsoring terrorism and the rest.
”Those things have paid off because while we are facing those allegations, this issue of pump price has remained.
“I repeat, we were betrayed by Mr President, that statement we issued over our being betrayed is being denied by officials of the government.
“I am repeating that we were betrayed. Some of you here were at the meeting when Mr President said, ‘Ajaero you are the problem’”, he said.
