Peters Adeyemi, Deputy President of NLC speaks on the budget deficit, welfare of workers, and ltimatum by varsity workers among others. MOSES JOHN brings the details.
2018 budget deficit What we are saying essentially is that government should be able to raise enough resources towards ensuring that there is a balanced budget without necessarily putting burden on the poor working people, particularly public and civil servants.
We are saying government must ensure there is tax justice, that is the rich must be properly taxed against what we are currently having in the country where public and civil servants were taxed out of their resources.
The excessive taxation of these two categories of workers is unacceptable while the rich, the big companies and the multinational are not adequately taxed.
We have said severally that MTN of this world and other multinationals must be adequately taxed for our government must raise resources. It can’t just be about deregulation of the oil sector or increase in the pump price of petroleum as the only way for it to generate resources.
We said no, but it can also generate resources from a lot of people in the country that are extremely rich, some of them are owning private jets, some owned lots of properties but we don’t know why government is not taxing them.
You are aware that some of these countries in Europe that don’t even have mineral resources, they generate their resources through taxation and it doesn’t really mean that you have to tax the poor to death like is currently being done in our country.
Beyond that, we are also saying that if government successfully prosecuted the war on corruption, and it is ensuring that resources meant for the development of our country that are being stolen by a few individuals on the position of authority, are retrieved back into infrastructural development like roads, health, education and others, the masses of the country will feel the impact of the success of the war against corruption.
Also, we must commend this government because with the war on corruption, lots of people are afraid to put their hands into public funds, even though we cannot say people don’t steal from the public funds but there is a sense of fear and people don’t steal as much as they used to steal.
However, what we want to see is for this to translate into the lives of the people.
Dateline for tax evaders Naturally, if you evade tax you can be prosecuted.
So, we expect government to deal decisively with those who are evading tax, those who are not paying what they are supposed to pay. I said that even elected politicians in government should be made to pay correct tax.
In fact, we should stop this comment that we don’t know how much certain politicians are earning, like the National Assembly.
To us, that is not true because we should be able to know since there is lot of avenues where this should be obtained.
Also since you know how much a civil servant earns, you should also know how much a member of the National Assembly or minister earns as well, even president and his vice too.
Evading tax is a crime and those culpable should be made to face the music.
Budget padding The truth is why now, why is the president saying that now? That is a recurring situation.
You remember a member of the National Assembly, Hon. Jibrin(Abdulmumini) once raised an alarm about padding.
So, it is not a new thing.
I don’t know if the president decided to talk about it because of election, but I think is something that is not new but something that has always happened.
We are also aware each year when the National Assembly finishes with the budget, the figures are usually increased.
So, what is new is that he is talking about it now.
So, for me, I think that we should take appropriate actions against what is not right and stop lamenting.
But my worry is that; does it end there? If the National Assembly increases the budget, so why did the president sign? University workers’ ultimatum There are two things we are trying to do.
One is to tell our members that after our meeting of July 4th and nothing happened, and we would resume our suspended strike.
Two, is to tell our members to go and get their permanent voter card ready.
Because the only way you can punish a government that is insensitive is to vote such a government out.
We have been on these issues for several years and the only way is to vote them out, because you don’t know.
Sometimes, we appear confused on what to do with government, sometimes we dialogue signed agreement, signed memorandum of understanding with government and you promised to implement within five weeks and months, and later nothing happened.
So, we have told our members after our July meeting, which would be holding with all our members across the country, we will take resolution there to resume the suspended strike and again to get registered and wait for the election.
Welfare of workers That is why we are asking every worker in Nigeria to go beyond rhetoric, but go register.
So, in states where the governors took the issue of salaries as secondary, that is something that is less important, they should go in their numbers and vote that government out because there is always one person that is committed to payment of salaries.
Even as we are talking about this crisis today, there are governors that are paying salaries regularly.
So if it is a priority, it is a priority but if is not, it is not.
So, we are sensitising Nigerian workers and our leaders in various states, that beyond the efforts put on these issues, we need to go a step further.
Also, you are aware these were issues we took up at the ILC in Geneva, where government was struggling with the fact but they can’t be able to break that fact because the truth is the situation in Kaduna, Lokoja is still there.
In fact, a few days back, death was recorded of civil servants who died as a result of non-payment of salaries.
So, for me, Nigerian workers must be ready to carry our destiny in our hands, nobody will do it for us and so we must do it ourselves and the NLC is committed to this campaign and also committed to the emancipation of the downtrodden workers.
We are sure that if Nigerians register and get their PVCs, things would change.
New wage The issue of new minimum wage is going on and I don’t want to preempt anything, but I think the committee is working on time and it would deliver on time.
