In a bid to discourage the organized labour from carrying out their planned nationwide strike, the federal government through the minister of Labour and Employment, Dr Chris Ngige reaches truce with labour leaders. The minister who addressed the delegation in his Abuja office assured Nigerians of the government willingness in ensuring strict compliance to the new minimum wage law. According to him
“This issue has been ongoing for about six days now starting from Wednesday last week. I can assure you that its a peaceful deliberation as can be seen from the smiles on our faces. I want to appeal to us to adopt social dialogue as recommended by the International Labour Organization (ILO), that is the best mechanism for resolving industrial disputes”
The minister assured the organized labour that government was not going to intimidate nor coace them into taking what is not benefitial to the parties involved as the essence of every government is to Carter for her citizenry.
In his response, the deputy president of NLC, Comrade Amaechi Asugwumi appreciated government commitment with a view to resolving the issues amicably
“For us as labour, I think the matter is a straight forward matter, that is why we want to belief the negotiation is still ongoing, even though we thought the meeting will be concluded today, that prediction is not successful therefore adjournment became necessary. To the best of our knowledge, the struggle will still continue. Tomorrow (today), we will meet by 2p.m, that meeting will also determine the fate of the parties. We expect that we close that meeting positively. So far, commitment has been shown, but we believe that the areas that are still in contest are critical therefore government is urged to on their part see how they can shift grounds positively in order to mitigate the agitations ahead”. He Said
In the same spirit of social dialogue, the acting Head of Service of the federation, Dr Folashade Yemi-Esan speaking unbehalf of government thanked labour for the show of love which will give room for rectifying other gray areas in the demands by labour.
“We had very peaceful deliberation today. The labour side has discovered that its just one side that is remaining which is the welfare of workers, so we will work very closely to resolve the issues. Both sides have made a lot of concession but we discovered that there are some gray areas that need to be ironed out, so some documents are going to be studied” she said.
The meeting which started at around 2p.m lasted till 8:35 after several meetings in between meeting. The negotiation is to be reconvened today in Abuja.
