The Minister of Labour and Employment, Chris Ngige has revealed that the committee setup to review the minimum wage are almost done with their review suggesting that a new minimum wage could be announced any time soon.
According to him, the Technical Committee on National Minimum Wage, saddled with the responsibility of reviewing workers’ salaries to reflect current socio-economic realities, will submit its report next week.
“We are almost finishing our work and we are handing over next week….“Everyone knows that prices have gone up and in some states, workers are not getting salaries. They are unable to pay the minimum wage. These are the things we have taken into account in our discussion.
“We also have warnings from doctors’ union and ASUU, as well as NASU. We are discussing with them but we want to appeal to all of them that there is nothing like warning strike,’’ he said..
The Federal Budget has been dominated by recurrent expenditure over the years with successive governments finding it hard to cut public expenditure. Austerity measures were mooted by the last administration as Nigerians faced up to a declining price in crude oil prices. However, the GEJ administration caved in it approached an election year.
Rather then cut recurrent expenditure, the government had increased minimum wage in 2011 after GEJ bowed to pressure from labour unions. Last year the NLC had called for the minimum wage to increase from N18,000 to N65,000. It is unclear where they will find the money to pay in the event that they decide to increase minimum wage.
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