Abuja — The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) yesterday said it will not guarantee industrial peace in Nigeria following plans by the Federal Government to remove the subsidies on petroleum products.

Finance Minister, Mr. Olusegun Aganga, was quoted as saying that government plans to remove subsidies on domestic fuel prices beginning from December this year or latest by the end of 2011.

NLC in a statement signed by Onah Iduh, Head of Media and Public Relations, said the minister claimed that the plan was as a result of government's investment in mass transit system, which he said, will ease the impact of subsidy withdrawal on the masses, and described the claim as unfortunate.

Comrade Onah added that as far as NLC was concerned, the position of the Minister is completely against the subsisting dialogue between labour and government, which began few weeks before Dr. Goodluck Jonathan was sworn in as President and Commander-in-Chief, when he set up a committee to look at labour's critical areas of concern.

"To the best of our knowledge, nothing meaningful has come out of the discussion up till now. We see the minister's comment, therefore, as pre-emptive of the dialogue and invariably a mark of government's insincerity on the policies of subsidy and deregulation.

"We wish to state that the NLC still remains opposed to the twin policies of subsidy withdrawal and deregulation principally because the arguments usually advanced by government do not take into consideration the broader social and economic implications on especially the masses who are supposed to be the beneficiaries of subsidy.

"We wish to make it abundantly clear that the implications of the removal of subsidy go far beyond the question of availability of mass transit system or whatever amount of money government would be saving. It is essentially the question of government living up to its basic responsibility of providing governance in the best interest of the masses. In the oil sector which is the hub of our economy, this will be symbolised in functional refineries, effectively coordinated distribution network and other variables all geared towards serving national interests," he said.