Labour To Present 100,000 As Minimum Wage

By: Adeyemi Lahanmi.



Feelers from sources are saying that the Organised Labour may settle for N100,000 as the new minimum wage. This is as the Tripartite Committee on National Minimum Wage will  commence daily meetings for five days to reach a consensus.

It is also been said that the union leaders are  willing to review their demand from N494,000 to N100,000, following the feedbacks that followed their proposal which was considered outrageous and unrealistic.

Minister of Information and National Orientation, Mohammed Idris disclosed that the proposed minimum wage would result in an annual expenditure of N9.5tn which is unrealistic considering  the nation’s finances. This led to the President directing the Minister of Finance to draw up a working template to resolve the minimum wage crisis.

It is also being mooted that labour would present to the tripartite committee 100,000 as the new minimum wage during the negotiations. This is according to a senior official in the NLC who disclosed this in confidence.

Deputy Head,NLC Political Commission, Prof. Theophilus Ndubuaku, confirmed that the Tuesday tripartite meeting on minimum wage was to draw an agenda for the daily meetings.

“We met today (Tuesday) to draw up an agenda for the one-week daily meeting. We met today and drew the agenda because the agreement was that we meet daily for the meet one week and on our own, we said we are relaxing the strike not even suspending it.

“It’s more like putting everybody on red alert. It means we are not going to give any notice. Which means by this time next week, we are going on strike. There is a difference between relax and suspend. Relax is to stay on your duty post and put your hands on the trigger. It is tomorrow (today) that we are expecting the government to submit another proposal,’’ he explained.

In a related development,  TUC boss, Festus Osifo had said the government had given a guarantee that they will do something good and that the committee must also show seriousness in resolving the situation.