By Victor Ahiuma-Young
PORT HARCOURT— TRADE Union Congress of Nigeria, TUC, has said the alleged decision of  the Federal Government to devalue the nation’s currency because of the N18,000 minimum wage would hurt the state governments more than the workers since 60 per cent of the state budgets were for capital items.

The union said  the move by the Nigerian Governors Forum, NGF, to amend the constitution so as to remove labour and related matters from the exclusive list to the concurrent list was aimed at effectively killing labour movement as the representative of the less-privileged in the country.

Chairman of the Rivers State Council of TUC, Mr Chika Onuegbu, in a statement said: “The alleged decision by government to devalue the naira because of the N18,000 minimum wage will hurt the state governments more than the workers since close to 60 per cent of the state governments budgets are for capital items.

“Obviously, the prices of the capital projects will jump up seriously due to the devaluation. In the case of Rivers State, many of the ongoing projects will be renegotiated as contractors would ask for variation due to devaluation induced inflation.”

“The government will only achieve money illusion and momentary loss of real wage for workers and their unions would commence another round of wage agitations with attendant industrial unrest across all sectors of the economy.

More painful is that most states and companies, which borrowed money in foreign currency will have severe difficulties repaying the loans and since the country does not produce anything except crude oil and natural gas, but imports virtually everything, the devaluation will simultaneously increase inflation and lending rates,” he added.