WILLIAM ATTAH, GOMBE
The Tripartite Committee on the National Minimum wage has on Thursday organized a public hearing for the North East Zone of the country.
The Chairman of the committee for the North-East zone and Plateau State Governor, Simon Lalong who was represented by the committee’s Deputy Chairman who is also the Deputy National President of the Nigeria Labour Congress, Comrade Peter Adeyemi, said after the public hearing the committee will be meeting by the middle of May to analyse all the reports from across the country.
Comrade Adeyemi said the labour position demanded 66,500 naira as the new minimum wage but several reports and presentations during the public hearing indicates that some State governors are talking of 28,000, 23,000 and 24,000 naira as the new minimum wage.
” This is just one part of the process and there after further steps will be taken and conclusively the agenda has provided that everything will be done towards ensuring that this exercise is concluded by August”.
He said the recommendations of the committee would be presented to the federal government and the federal government will make its inputs and then present a final position to the National Assembly for a new law on the new minimum wage.
“So far everything has been done, point to that fact that everybody realistically agreed that the 18,000 naira minimum wage right now is something that is unrealistic and unreasonable and cannot make any Nigerian worker live comfortable”.
He said the submission of the memorandum has been extremely very encouraging and hoped that by the end of the exercise a Nigerian worker should expect something good.
Comrade Adeyemi said some of the recommendations received are based on how to mitigate the effect of inflation which probably erode on whatever is agreed on as the new minimum wage.
