Barring any last minutes change, the Tripartite Committee approved by the Federal Government to review the minimum wage will submit its report this week.
Although the committee was supposed to present its report last month, the public holidays to mark Eid-el-Kabir affected the date.
It was reliably gathered that the committee met Tuesday at the Trsnscorp Hilton Abuja and a highly placed source privy to the meeting told Vanguard that the organised labour was pressing that the report be concluded Wednesday.
The source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Vanguard that though the government representatives had requested for more time, labour felt the report of the committee had been delayed for too long.
“We are pressing that the report is made ready today. We are supposed to conclude everything about the report in August but the Sallah holiday affected the planned date. Though the government representatives have requested for more time, we feel that it is long overdue,” the source said.
On the amount labour was demanding, the source said it was not the issue at present and that the leadership of labour had before now proposed N65,500 and that the position remained the same.
On the allegation that the state governors opposed a new minimum wage, the source who is a member of the committee, said that already, governors had made proposals on what they wanted to pay.
He said: “Some of the governors have come up to propose how much they will pay in the new minimum wage, so, I don’t think that all of them have opposed the idea of new minimum wage.”
The National Minimum Wage Committee is made up of the federal state government as well as the private sector which include, National Employment Consultative Agency, NECA), Manufacturers Association of Nigeria, MAN, National Association of Chambers of Commerce, Industry Mines and Agriculture, NACCIMA, Small and Medium Enterprises, SMEs, the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, the Trade Union Congress, TUC, and the government representatives both at the federal and state levels.
Meanwhile, the National President of Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, Comrade Ayuba Wabba, has said that it will be a mark of irresponsibility for any governor to say that he was not elected to pay salaries.
Wabba, who was reacting to the report credited to the Chairman of Nigeria Governors Forum, NGF, Abdullazeez Yari that the governors were not only elected to pay salaries, noted that it was a cardinal responsibility of the governors to pay those that generate the wealth.
Yari, who is the governor of Zamfara State was quoted as saying: “I don’t think you people voted us only to pay salaries. You are looking for good roads, electricity, education and others. So, we can’t do magic. It’s only when we have the funds that we can do all those things.”
Wabba stated that if the governors should pay themselves and the litany of aides they employed, it was obligatory that they should pay the workforce.
