The struggle for an N30,000 minimum wage for the least paid workers in Nigeria by organised labour appears to be nearing a joyous end as the National Assembly has transmitted a clean copy of the passed bill by the National Assembly to President Muhammadu Buhari for assent.
This came as Medical and Health Workers’ Union of Nigeria, MHWUN, has advised Buhari to look beyond medical doctors and appoint technocrats in health administration as Ministers of Health in his second tenure.
President of Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, Ayuba Wabba, who disclosed the transmitting of minimum wage bill to Buhari, yesterday, at the opening ceremony of the 10th National Delegates Conference of MHWUN, informed that it was sent to Buhari on Wednesday.
According to him, “I am aware that the minimum wage bill has been passed and a clean copy has been transmitted to the President on Wednesday and we are expecting the President to assent to it.
“I am sure our workers will benefit from it. It is important, I say from the point of fact, that it is long overdue. It is not only long overdue, what is even N30,000 in the Nigerian economy?
“Therefore, everybody must agree that workers have been patient, workers have demonstrated enough commitment and therefore, I think, implementation at various levels should actually go seamlessly.”
“We are also looking at the implementation, and I assure you in our normal way, we will continue to support our states from one state to the other until everything and everybody is able to benefit from it. This is because the truth of it is that if you look at the rate of inflation is even higher than the minimum wage that has been increased. The reality of it is that it is just to keep body and soul together but actually to address the fact that we want a living wage.”
The NLC also faulted the federal government plans to reduce the salary of certain categories of public workers, insisting that it was the bogus pay package of the political class that should be reduced.
Earlier, while welcoming delegated, he advised President Buhari to look beyond medical doctors and appoint technocrats in health administration as Ministers of Health in his second tenure.
According to the union, the President’s doing so would reduce the friction between doctors and other professionals in the health sector and also ensure only unbiased advice on the way forward for the country’s deplorable health system is given the government.
VANGUARD
