The leadership of Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), on Wednesday directed all workers to picket all the offices of the Central Bank of Nigeria nationwide starting from next week over the current cash crunch in the country.
NLC President, Joe Ajaero, gave the directive during a press conference in Abuja on Wednesday.
The labour leader said the directive became imperative following the expiration of one week ultimatum given to the apex bank to make cash available for Nigerians.
The NLC last week gave the CBN and commercial banks a one week ultimatum to make naira notes available to workers and Nigerians.
The organisation said it would direct workers to stay at home if the apex bank failed to make the naira notes available to Nigerians.
Ajaero said the decision to picket CBN branches became necessary, as the Federal Government and the CBN have not shown any commitment to address the situation.
He lamented that despite the Supreme Court order allowing the old N500 and N1000 notes to circulate with the new notes till December 31 this year, the situation appears to be getting worse as workers cannot access cash to pay fares to work, nor can they buy food for their families.
The apex Labour union also criticised the pricing irregularities in the petroleum sector, which was also a cause for concern.
“Last week, we gave an ultimatum for the review of the cash crunch bedeviling the country, but we have discovered to our dismay that as at this moment not much effort has been made to ameliorate the situation, the government is still foot dragging on these issues we raised.
“Based on this, we met again this morning to review our position and resolved that by Wednesday next week, all CBN branches will be picketed.
“Workers are directed to stay at home too because people cannot eat, workers can no longer go to the office, we have been pushed to the wall, we have decided to take our destiny in our hands, we have mobilised our workers for this exercise,” Ajaero stated.
