Festus Osifo, the president of the Trade Union Congress (TUC), has told governors in the country to start saving funds that would be used to pay arrears of the new minimum wage when a new figure is agreed upon.
Osifo stated that “before the end of July, maximum early August, the new minimum wage act should be there.”
As reported by Vanguard newspaper on Tuesday, June 25, Osifo gave the advice when he received some stakeholders from Kogi state led by a one-time chairman of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Onu Edoka, at the TUC headquarters, Abuja.
Edoka is also the incumbent special adviser to the Kogi state governor on labour matters.
Daily Independent quoted Osifo as saying:
“On the issue of the minimum wage what we wish to also say is that we are not at this moment even dwelling on the N30,000 again because we know that by the grace of God, before the end of July, maximum early August, the new minimum wage act should be there.
“It should have moved from the stage of submission to the national assembly to the stage of bill and to be assented to by the President.
“What we are working on from both labour centres is that before the end of July, we should have a new minimum wage that must have passed through the processes, that must have been assented to by the President so that the plight of the workers will improve much more so that the current economic challenges that we are facing as a country will be improved upon and an average worker will be able to go to market and buy one or two things to take care of his or her family because of this skyrocketing inflation that we have today in our country.”
Earlier, TheNGblog reported that the organised labour said it expects President Bola Tinubu to reach out to members of the tripartite committee on the new national minimum wage to reconcile the figures.
Labour noted this is important considering the current stalemate.
It also said that it was expecting to see a copy of the draft bill that would be sent to the national assembly. This, it said, would ensure that some of the issues discussed at the tripartite committee were captured in the bill.
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