The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has put forward a demand for a new national minimum wage of N794,000 for workers in the south-west zone.
The chairperson of the NLC Lagos state chapter, Funmi Sessi, made this announcement during her presentation at the ongoing public hearing of the tripartite committee on national minimum wage in Lagos.
Sessi emphasized that this demand was a unanimous agreement among all members of the union in the south-west region.
The call for a revised minimum wage comes as part of the deliberations by the 37-member tripartite committee, inaugurated by the federal government on January 30, with the responsibility of recommending a new national minimum wage for Nigerian workers.
Chaired by Bukar Goni Aji, former head of service of the federation, the committee includes representatives from the federal and state governments, private sector, and organized labor.
The NLC president, Joe Ajaero, had previously stated during an interview on ARISE NEWS in February that the proposed new minimum wage for workers should be N1 million.
Ajaero justified this demand by pointing to the challenges of galloping inflation in the country and the depreciation of the naira.
He said, “This N1 million may be relevant if the value of the Nigerian naira continues to depreciate and if the inflation is not checked because the demand of labour is equally dependent on what is happening in the society.
“You will remember that by the time we were contemplating N200,000, the exchange rate was about N800/N900. As we talk today, the exchange rate is about N1,400 or even more.”
Ozioma Samuel-Ugwuezi
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