By SUSAN EDEH

BAUCHI-The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has urged President Goodluck Jonathan to actualise the N18,000 minimum wage to civil servants in the country, saying the implementation was long overdue.

The Chairman of the Bauchi State chapter of the union, Comrade Hasimu Gital, who made the appeal in an interview with Vanguard, said, “I can recall vividly that negotiations for the N18,000 minimum wage took a long time before it was approved and made as a law.

‘’First, it went through the National Assembly for it to be passed as a bill and then signed into law and by the President. All these processes took some time. We want the issue of minimum wage to become a reality so that civil servants can start receiving the money throughout the country.It should apply to both federal civil servants and their counterparts in the 36 states’’, he said.

He said President Jonathan should ensure that all the governors domesticate the law to make the payment uniform throughout the country.

On the steps taken by NLC to hasten the domestication of the Act on minimum wage, Gital said since Bauchi State was the first state to embrace and implement the minimum wage in the North-East Zone, the NLC in the state has continued to appeal to the state government to set the pace by being the first state to start paying civil servants the N18,000 minimum wage soonest.