The Federal Government has laid to rest fears by employers of Labour and various state governments that the idea of the minimum wage was to impose on them a uniform pay package for workers in both the public and private sector of the Nigeria Economy.
Minister of Labour and Employment, Senator Chris Ngige who spoke at the Public hearing on the new minimum foe the south south geopolitical zone in Port Harcourt said the fears was unfounded as it was not meant to impose uniform wages on the states.
A statement from the Director of Press in the Ministry, Samuel Olowokoore quote the Minister as saying that agitations by a section of the Labour Tripartite Stakeholders that a uniform Minimum Wage in the federation is at variance with the tenets of federalism should arise.
Sen. Ngige said Minimum Wage being a Federal law as contained in section 34 of the Constitution, โmeans a price floor below which workers may not yield their labour. Above that floor, any state can pay as higher as its resource capacity accommodates.
โThe intendment of the minimum wage therefore is not about uniformity to hold back rich states or members of the private sector who have resources to pay higher from doing so but to set a national base below which the reward for labour in terms of wages would be inequable, indecent and slavish, hence illegal and unacceptable.
โThe intendment is to set an irreducible minimum that can guarantee opportunities for work to earn a fair income; security in the workplace and social protection for workers and their familiesโ.
The Minister emphasized that the life of a worker and employers especially those in the private sector was intrinsically interwoven with the development of the nation, hence the importance the Federal government attached to interacting directly with workers all over the federation, so as to fully accommodate their aspirations for decent work in the new Minimum Wage.
He said the committee decided to embark on nationwide public hearing to give workers a say in the wage fixing machinery of the country.
โToday, in the spirit of give and take, workers and employers, both private and public sectors are all seated side by side to give credence to the maxim that there is no employer without workers and no workers without employers. The aim is to ensure that a new Minimum Wage can assure the attainment of a social Protection Floor for Nigerian citizens in such a manner that workers have access to food, shelter and essential healthcareโ, he said.
He urged workers to utilize the opportunity provided by the public hearing taking place in all the geo-political zones to make necessary input into the work of the Tripartite National Minimum Wage Committee set up by President Muhammadu Buhari.
While commending the government for initiating the wage review in order to uplift the living condition of the nationโs labour force, Governor of Rivers State, Chief Nyesom Wike said there was a great injustice in a nation where workers labour to sustain the nation only to go home in poverty.
Wike however frowned at the Minimum Wage for the entire country and insisted that every state should be allowed to decide what minimum to pay its workers.
