Nigerian unions call for increase of wages, allowances

Nigeria's white-collar Trade Union Congress (TUC) on Monday called on the government to increase workers' wages and allowances while adopting measures to check two- digit inflation, otherwise they would join other unions to stage a nationwide strike.

In a statement issued at the venue where leaders from the nation's leading trade unions are holding a meeting to hammer out a detailed action plan over the recurring increase in fuel prices.

Under the four-point statement, the TUC said the government should increase the workers' wages, transport fees and other allowances and adopt necessary measures to check the devaluing of the currency naira.

Statistics show that in the past few years, the Nigerian currency naira has devalued drastically from 95 naira in 2001 to 1 US dollar to over 140 naira to 1 dollar now.

Last month, Nigeria's petrol price went up from around 50 naira (about US 38 cents) to 65 naira (about 49 cents) per liter, the tenth increase in fuel prices since President Olusegun Obasanjo took office in 1999.

Obasanjo has said that price increases are inevitable in view of the tightened government spending and deregulation policy introduced two years ago that meant long-standing government fuel subsidies will be abolished gradually.

According to Obasanjo, the government had financed about 1 billion dollars in fuel subsidies in the past six month as a result of high prices of petrol in the international market.

The development, he noted during a recent television chat program, could no longer be sustained as the money should be used to develop basic infrastructure to encourage economic growth for poverty eradication.

The 130 million Nigerians, of which over 70 percent live below a dollar per day each, however, see cheap fuel as a birthright, as the country earns billions of dollars from oil yearly.

Nigeria is Africa's largest oil producer, but is forced to import more than half its daily demand of 30 million liters of fuel. Its four aged state-owned refineries are currently operating at about 70 percent of their installed capacity.

Source: Xinhua