The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has dismissed President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s cut in transport fare by 50 percent for inter-state travellers and free train ride during the Yuletide celebrations.
In a reaction to the two offers last night, the NLC doubted the implementability of the pronouncement.
NLC head, information and public affairs, Comrade Benson Upah, told LEADERSHIP that the federal government was only “killing a cow with mouth,” a term which indicates that it is a declaration that will not work.
In his bid to ease travelling costs for Nigerians, Tinubu had approved a 50 percent discount on road transport fares and free train rides from December 21 to January 4, 2024.
The minister of solid minerals, Dele Alake, disclosed this to State House correspondents yesterday at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
But in a swift reaction, Upah, using a Nigerian adage said, “Government is killing a cow with mouth and we Nigerians are eating it with our ears.”
Also, the acting national secretary of the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW), Sulaiman Abdulkadir Musa, said the union is still skeptical about the mode of the policy implementation.
He said the federal government was yet to come up with a definite implementation module on who is supposed to benefit from the rebate.
He said, “The federal government engaged the transport union on the development but one issue there is with the capacity of some leadership of the union to be able to implement the policy.
“As far as I’m concerned, the mode of implementation is what is not yet properly defined because what happened between the minister of trade and investment is the issue of generating cost from an intended traveller at the point of loading. We are still having problems with that and we don’t know if the government is sending their representatives at loading points to be able to implement that.
“And I don’t think most of the union’s leadership has been able to communicate this to the various state and local branches, because they need to be briefed, they need to be adequately sensitised about the mode of the implementation.”