The Federal Government has set a two-week timeline on wage award, tax exemptions and allowances to public sector workers to “cushion the pains and anguish they are going through as a result of subsidy removal,” as put forward by the Trade Union Congress.

The government also agreed to iron out the modalities of accessing the intervention fund that was recently announced as palliative to Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises.

The Congress said only federal workers had not benefited from the palliatives rolled out by the government so far.

President of TUC, Comrade Festus Osifo, said this on Monday during a meeting with the Minister of Labour and Employment, Simon Lalong.

But the leadership of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) boycotted the meeting convened by Lalong targeted at averting the two-day warning strike already declared by NLC.

Only the leadership of TUC led by its President, Osifo showed up for the meeting slated for 3:00 pm but started at exactly 5:32 pm.

The meeting lasted 30 minutes.

Some of the issues requiring urgent attention included implementation of palliatives; wage award; tax exemptions and allowances to public sector workers; modalities for N70bn SMEs; RTEAN crisis among others.

Lalong said: “We are going to address those issues within the period of two weeks and come back for further discussion. Some of the issues we discussed are those that are very urgent. There are some that will require a long span of time. This was the basis of our discussion. We agreed that there should be no strike within the two-week period while we are doing our deliberations and working towards realising some of these objectives.”

Before the meeting went into a closed-door session, Osifo said the TUC leadership would continue to engage with the federal government to ensure that its demands are addressed.

The TUC ruled out any plans to join the two-day warning strike declared by the NLC. (The Nation)

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