NUPENG sides with Buhari on budget cut, slams NASS (Photos)

NUPENG sides with Buhari on budget cut, slams NASS (Photos)

OrderPaperToday – The Nigeria Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas workers (NUPENG) has weighed in on the controversy surrounding the 2018 budget, and has condemned the National Assembly for making cuts in strategic projects that are critical to its members.

The petroleum workers union in a press statement on Sunday by its national president, Prince Williams Akporeha, described the cut as “unreasonable and insensitive.”

“The leadership of NUPENG is utterly displeased and has condemned in strongest terms the whopping N11.5bn cuts made by the National Assembly from the proposed allocations in the 2018 national budget.

“Cutting from allocations meant for crucial and very critical infrastructural projects that have huge socio-economic impacts on national and regional roads like the Lagos-Ibadan expressway, second Niger bridge, ancillary roads, East-West road, Bonny-Bodo road and others, to say the least is unreasonable and insensitive to the yearning needs of the people our parliamentarians claim to represent, more painfully this ill-informed decisions have the potentials of impacting negatively on the nation’s economic recovery plans,” the statement said.

Akporeha while urging the relevant authorities to take necessary steps to redress the concerns raised, warned that the Labour union would not just stand by and watch while its members who play critical role in the downstream sector die as a result of bad roads.

He added that the national budget, “must be patriotically designed to consolidate the achievements of previous budgets so as to deliver on Nigeria’s Economic Recovery and Growth Plan as envisaged by the present day government which is the same line of logical, reasonable and responsible thought process that we expect from our Federal lawmakers.”