<<Print>>

The Industrial and Commercial Workers Union (ICU) has appealed to government as a matter of urgency to direct the National Petroleum Authority (NPA) to reduce fuel prices drastically to avert redundancies that they are causing because of the power crises.

According to the ICU about 560 workers in total under their umbrella have been laid off in various companies from January to date due to the power crises.

This, the ICU said was as a result of employers having to put so much into buying fuel to run generator sets as a result of the power crisis.

According to the General Secretary of ICU, Mr Solomon Kotei, this was the second time that they were making such an appeal to the President.

He said not too long ago, organised labour was made to understand that the automatic adjustment formula on utilities and fuel was working and beginning early last year, any time fuel prices went up on the world market, adjustments upwards were quickly done without recourse to anybody.

Mr Kotei said the thinking was that when fuel prices begin to drop, reciprocally, “we were also going to see reduction in fuel prices but that is not the issue.”

“And now that we are having this power crises, if fuel prices had gone down, employers who are using gen-sets would not be putting so much into buying of fuel but as it stands now everything is up and high and that is the major cause in downsizing work force,” he said.