By  WOLE MOSADOMI
Niger state govern ment has finally succumbed to the demand of workers in the state by signing into law the N18,000 Minimum wage.

With this latest development, the proposed strike which was supposed to go full blown as from Monday has been called off while the warning strike embarked upon since Wednesday and which was supposed to end of Friday has also been lifted.

In the signing ceremony by the two parties held Thursday evening, the Head of service, Alhaji Ahmed Matane, explained that the agreement between the two parties “is not based on salary review but full implementation of the agreed N18, 000 Minimum wage and that is to say the lowest paid worker in the state will go home with N18,000 while the senior officers will be maintaining their seniority accordingly in their take home pay.”

The arrears with effect from April this year will however be visited later while another possible review is being contemplated for next year if the revenue income of the state improves considerably.

The Head of Service however explained that though the state government out of its commitment to remain “workers friendly” and to enhance productivity has agreed to implement the new minimum wage, “it will certainly have a spiral effect on other programmes because other things will suffer as some developmental projects will certainly slow down.”

Alhaji Matane explained that with the development, the state government will be forced to take a more drastic step in increasing the internally Generated Revenue which stands at about N250m monthly in order to meet up with its developmental programmes.

He maintained that contrary to the widespread rumour circulating in the state even before the new Minimum saga, the state government he said has never contemplated and even has no intention to retrench workers in the state describing the rumour as “not only malicious but a calculated attempt to discredit the government and set both government and workers against each other.”

State chairman of NLC, Comrade Ndako Idris while thanking government for agreeing to pay the minimum wage explained that the new table finally agreed for the payment was not forced on them saying, “in the past, there were about seven different tables in circulation but this table we have agreed upon is Labour table and all our members are with us and they know we are representing them well,” while the effective payment of the Minimum wage takes effect from this month (September), the entire 34,000 workers will have to receive their wages for the next four months through table payment to really ascertain the genuine workers in the state and flush out the ghosts.