Labour leaders in Ekiti State have said the agreement with the federal government must be considered before calling for a minimum wage review.
They argued that the agreement between the government and labour following the approval of the N70,000 minimum wage in July 2024 stipulates that the salary will be reviewed every three years.
The chairman of the Trade Union Congress (TUC ) in Ekiti State, Dr Omotola Farotimi, told LEADERSHIP in Ado-Ekiti, the state capital, that the standard in place before now is to review minimum wage every five years.
The TUC boss said, “After the President Bola Tinubu-led administration approved the implementation of N70,000 new minimum wage for Nigerian workers, the review has been reduced to every three years. And it has not been up to two years since the minimum implementation commenced, so we can’t start discussing that now.
“As labour leaders, if we want to be so sincere and be scientific about it, we know that the proper time for the review of minimum wage is supposed to come up before agitating, and if the time has not come, it won’t be fair on our part to start agitating for a new minimum wage increment.
“Looking at increasing prices of goods and services generally, she said, though inflation is high, food item prices in particular are now stable and reducing, compared to last year”.
In his submission, the National President of the Academic Staff of Secondary Schools (ASUSS), Comrade Sola Adigun, posited that although the present economic condition is biting hard on Nigerians, the labour centres are not ignorant of the agreement signed on the wage review, which is three years instead of five years.
Adigun, the immediate past Chairman of the TUC in the state, decried the failure of more than 10 states of the federation to implement the N70000 minimum wage.
“Our mandate is like the cry of Oliver Twist, who always asks for more. So if the state government can look inward and increase the wage, we will not say that.
Financially buoyant states can go ahead and increase their workers’ wages. Our heart desires a wage increase because we have realised that the N70000 minimum wage is insufficient to take us home again with the biting hard inflation”.
