Ayomidele Oluwasusi
Abuja – The Trade Union Congress (TUC) on Tuesday reiterated its demand for a N250,000 minimum wage for Nigerian workers.
Festus Osifo, TUC president, made this known at the inaugural Annual Convention of the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria Women Commission in Abuja, themed “The Dynamic Woman: Navigating Challenges in a Constantly Evolving World.”
Osifo said at the event on Tuesday that the benchmark remained the ideal standard for improving the living conditions of employees across the nation.
He explained that both the TUC and the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) are currently engaged in discussions with Nigerian government officials to reach a consensus on the new minimum wage.
According to the labour chief, “Negotiations on the new minimum wage have not been abandoned, rather labour and the government were fine-tuning the matter.
“The minimum wage negotiations cannot be dead. The 2019 minimum wage (that has expired) took about two years to see the light of day. We started the negotiations in 2017.
“We promised you when we started in January (this year) that we will ensure this one is fast – tracked for us not to be in the conundrum that we were in 2019 which took two years.”
Osifo stated that the minimum wage issue was being addressed and mentioned that the President desired further consultations before presenting it to the National Assembly.
He added: “So where we are today, we submitted the divergent position in June, when we did that you know clearly that Mr President came out to say that he wanted to consult across board which is the governors, Local Government chairmen, organised private sector and labour, so we are doing some level of reach-out and conversations.
“So that what will be submitted to the National Assembly will actually be a minimum wage that will cater for the poorest of the poor, so for the fact that in the media we are not shouting, we are doing some level of internal work so that this bill will be submitted in earnest soon. We still insist on the N250,000 benchmark as ideal minimum wage.”
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