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•Labour urges lawmakers to increase pay to N30,000
The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon. Yakubu Dogara, yesterday disclosed that the N30,000 minimum wage being canvassed by workers can barely feed a small family unit.
This is as the organised labour groups implored members of the National Assembly to upwardly review the National Minimum Wage to N30,000 as against the N27,000 proposed by the federal government in the National Minimum Wage Amendment Bill transmitted to the lawmakers last week.
But the Chairman of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF) and Governor of Zamfara State, Abdulaziz Yari, reinterated that reviewing the minimum wage would depend on revenue sharing formula.
The governor said that when the wage was to be raised to N18,000, the governors raised the need to review the revenue sharing formula, which he said the workers were aware of.
Dogara, who spoke at the National Assembly during a public hearing on the New Minimum Wage organised by the House Ad-hoc Committee on New Minimum Wage, 2019, added that it is only when workers are dignified with wages that can provide them minimum comfort that their productivity level will increase.
He noted that the two focal points that must be given priority by government are poverty and corruption because while the former, caused mainly by underemployment and unemployment, is a threat to democracy, the latter fundamentally undermines democratic institutions and values.
Dogara, therefore, proposed for a more reasonable living wage that will not only provide for basic needs of the workers but also enable them to make provisions for themselves that will lift them out of poverty and lead to a reduction in corruption.
He explained that poverty as a threat to democracy is evident in vote buying and in the use of money to compromise electoral and security officials during elections, thereby subverting the will of the people on account of the sense of despondency and powerlessness that their lack breeds, and therefore, making them ever ready tools in the hands of tyrants and demagogues, who in the course of history, have always found it easy to mobilise for the purposes of subverting democratic Institutions.
The speaker stated, “While we are not oblivious of the current economic downturn and the dwindling revenue of government, we cannot also be blind to the fact that all economic indices indicate that even the 30,000 Naira Minimum Wage that Labour is asking for is not enough to sustain a small family unit. The nation may not have enough to satisfy the minimum demands of the Nigerian worker, but as a nation, we need to set our economic priorities right and ensure that we dignify our workers by making allowance for their minimum comfort. I know of no alternative if we hope to up the productivity level of our workforce.
Read full Story [ThisDay]