NLC: Strike Begins In Five States, FCT As Panel Meets
“His Excellency, the Executive Governor of Kaduna State, Senator Uba Sani, has complied with the spirit and letter of the National Minimum Wage Law, by paying the lowest paid civil servant N72,000 last month,” he said.
He added that the NLC had been pushing for consequential adjustments but the state government argued that there was a difference between salary increments and the minimum wage.
Musa explained that the state government received an average of N8bn from the Federal Allocation and generated around N4bn monthly, totalling N12bn revenue.
However, he said with the implementation of the minimum wage, the monthly wage bill had increased from N5.4bn to N6.3bn, including N4bn deduction for loan payments every month.
This, he said, left only N2bn for rural transformation, healthcare, education, and other public services in the state.
“It will be unfair for Kaduna State Government to spend almost all its revenue on consequential adjustments, after paying the mandatory minimum wage.
“There are over 10 million people who are also entitled to the accrued revenue of Kaduna State. There are 84,827 civil servants in the state. So, it is unreasonable for the government to spend over 90 per cent of its revenue on just about one per cent of the population,” he added.
Musa urged the NLC to exercise patience over the consequential adjustments, pending when the state government’s revenue improved.
“Governor Uba Sani is labour-friendly. He has demonstrated this by providing buses for civil servants to commute to work free of charge, as part of the palliatives to cushion the prevailing economic challenges,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Chairman of the NLC in Ebonyi State, Dr Oguguo Egwu, disclosed that the state workers had been directed to join the ongoing industrial action from today.
According to him, the warning strike, which will last one week, was sequel to the failure of Governor Francis Nwifuru to implement the new national minimum wage.
He said, “Talking about the new national minimum wage as it concerns Ebonyi State, our governor on September 11 at the Ojiji festival of Izzi Kingdom announced the new minimum wage of N70,000 and we are all aware of that.
“We were very happy and excited that Ebonyi would be among the first states to implement the wage. But subsequently, there was no communication and no information.
“And we heard that the governor wanted to implement the national minimum wage without any due process of collective bargaining where both the workers and government angle would meet to agree on the consequential adjustment.”
Also, the Zamfara State NLC secretary, Ahmed Abubakar, said workers in the state had yet to receive the new minimum wage, and as such had no alternative but to join the strike.
