The Federal Executive Council (FEC) yesterday approved a 30-day implementation plan for the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the Federal Government and the Organised Labour. FEC also took a decision against any external interference in unions activities by external bodies.
Meanwhile, the Minister of Labour and Employment, Simon Lalong, along with Minister of State, Nkeiruka Onyejeocha, have met with the factional leaderships of the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW).
Briefing newsmen at the end of FEC, Lalong said a MoU was presented to the Council on the implementation of the agreement with labour. He said: “We presented a memo from the Ministry of Labour and Employment on the agreement between government and labour. You are aware that 15 items are parts of the agreement.
“But we went beyond mere agreement because part of the agreement is to file it in court, which we have set the process already. The other one was presidential approval. There cannot be any presidential approval more than the FEC. So, we presented them to the Council and it was approved for implementation.
“It was agreed that within 30 days , there must be evidence of implementation and that was the basis of presenting to the memo to FEC.”
Fielding a question on item six of the MoU which bothers on the government alleged interference in the activities of the democratically elected leadership of the National Union of Road Transport Workers, NURTW and the mandate to him (Lalong) to resolve the crisis in the union on or before October 13, the Minister said he had already met with the various factions.
“Item six in the MoU is about interference specifically with issues that were about road transport workers. Immediately the next day, we embarked on meetings between the two organisations.
“As of today, they have already reached out and have concluded that of Road Transport Employers Association of Nigeria, RTEAN, today they are making a report to the ministry about their agreement because they went into agreement too and we are also going to get back to their parent association.
“The next one is the NURTW. Last week we were with them. Of course if some of you were there, you knew why we postponed it, I reminded them that we are keeping to the date of the agreement but they said they cannot strictly keep to the date because it is very important to them that we realized the aim. So we shifted the meeting till tomorrow. Today, we are going to get the report, by tomorrow we will fix a meeting.
“The reason why we presented these items to the Federal Executive Council is for them to note and approve that after these things we will not want to be tolerating interference into union activities.
“But those that are pending are within the Federal Ministry of Labour and Employment. Our own is to dispense with conflicts and we are going to continue to do that and these two items we have mentioned, were really the particular things they hammered on when we met. By God’s grace in the next few days, those ones are going to be sorted out.”
Source: The Guardian
