Five other states on partial implementation

By Victor Ahiuma-Young, Wole Mosadomi, Peter Okutu, Francis Igata & Marie-Theresa Nanlong

LAGOS—FOUR years after the National Minimum Wage, NMW, of N18.000 was signed into law, Enugu, Ebonyi, and Anambra states and five other states have either refused to implement it or implemented it partially.

The other states are Ekiti, Niger, Oyo, Plateau, Sokoto and Taraba.

While Anambra, Enugu and Ebonyi states have refused to implement at all, Niger, Plateau, Oyo, Ekiti, Taraba and Sokoto states have partially implemented the wage.

In Anambra, it was gathered that besides N10,000 the governor added to all the workers’ salary during a three-week strike to force implementation, the present government recently added 15 per cent pay rise.

This also fell short of the N18.000 NMW.

For  Ebonyi, while the minimum wage was not being implemented at all, it was gathered that what was on ground was a home -made table imposed on the workers by the government.

Similarly, in Enugu State, nothing has been done to implement the wage, rather the state government dragged the organized labour to court over the issue.

In the case of Ekiti State, while the core civil servants are being paid the wage, workers in the local government are yet to be paid.

Niger State government fully implemented the minimum wage for workers in level 1-6, those in level 7 and above, got something said to be substantial above their existing salary.

Similarly, in Oyo State, without the involvement of state chapter of Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC,  the government approved the payment of the wage to level 1-6 without the consent of the Public Service Joint Negotiating Council, PSJNC, the government was dealing with. When PSJNC resumed negotiation for workers in level 7-17, the government came up with N19,113.99, with a slight difference of between N1000 and N2000 increase without the consent of the negotiating team. It led to three weeks strike until the intervention of well meaning citizens of the state. It was, however, gathered that up till now, this figure has not been implemented.

In Plateau State, implementation commenced in October 2011 for core public workers, but till date, local government employees are receiving half of what the core civil servants receive.