Labour day: Workers Deserve more than 30,000 -Gombe Gov
Chima Azubuike, Gombe
Gombe State Governor, Muhammadu Yahaya has revealed that 30,000 is inadequate for a regular Nigerian worker with penchant to patronise private services due to the collapse of public utilities.
Yahaya noted that for a country where public facilities work at abysmal level, such workers would be left with no option than to patronise private facilities with burdensome charges.
He made this disclosure while addressing audience at the Workers day celebration tagged: ‘Covid-19 pandemic, Social and Economic crisis: challenges for recent jobs, social protection and people’s welfare.’
Yahaya said, “I make bold to say that 30,000 is not enough, I always insist that 30,000 is not enough but workers must work hard to justify whatever that is paid to them. If you pay 300,000 to a worker with a household of 5-6 they have to cater for education because we don’t have good public school, people tend to take their children to commercial (private) school and because we don’t have functional hospital they end up going to private hospital. If you pay N300,000 because of the attrition and depreciation of the value of the Naira.”
While urging workers to justify the enormous support they have enjoyed despite the paucity of fund the state is faced with, adding that payment of minimum for state government civil servants is active with the current ranking of the State as 2nd to 3rd in the allocation table.
“I am aware of the challenges affecting our workers. Since our assumption of office, our administration has been working with the NLC leadership on how to better improve the welfare of our working men and women. We were among the first States that implemented the 30,000-minimum wage. Even though we had to suspend it due to the pandemic, we were able to bring it back as promised, immediately after the economic situation had stabilized.
“I want to call on our civil servants to show more commitment in the discharge of their responsibility, even as our administration continues to cater for the welfare need of workers. We will not condole culture of laziness,” Governor Yahaya added.
Also, State Chairman, Nigeria Labour Congress [NLC], Mohammed Adamu, has lauded the governor for his labour friendly policies, adding that the state should work towards monthly savings in order to clear Local Government retirees gratuity.
“Your Excellency, we are not unaware of the limited that is accruing to the government. However, we are appealing to you to consider setting aside some amount of money on monthly basis for the settlement of retirees gratuity in the state and local government in order to curtail accumulation,” NLC boss said.
