<\/p>\n
The President of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Joe Ajaero, has expressed his concerns over the announcement made by the federal government regarding a pay increase for civil servants.<\/p>\n
The FG announced a pay rise ranging from 25 to 35 percent for civil servants across different consolidated salary structures.
\nHowever, Ajaero believes that this announcement is mischievous as the last minimum wage of N30,000 had already expired on April 18.
\n\u201cWe should be in the regime of new minimum wage as of today. Discussions were supposed to have been concluded,\u201d Ajaero said on Sunrise Daily, a Channels Television programme.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe federal government through the national assembly legislated on it. But we saw that the discussion entered voice mail because the federal government refused to reconvene the meeting that was adjourned<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the announcement now appears mischievous because there is no wage increase that government is announcing. For them to announce it now, it is an issue that we are worried about at the NLC and even at the TUC.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ajaero further said organised labour has agreed on N615,000 as the living wage for civil servants.<\/p>\n
\u201cLiving wage is such that will, at least keep you alive. It is not a wage that will make you poor and poorer. It is not a wage that will make you borrow to go to work. It is not a wage that will lead you to be in the hospital everyday because of malnutrition. For that living wage, we have tried to look at N615,000,\u201d he added.
\n\u201cLet me give you a breakdown of how we arrived at that figure. We have housing and accommodation of N40,000. We asked for electricity of N20,000 \u2014 of course that was before the current tariff increase. Nobody can spend this amount currently. We have utility that is about N10,000. We looked at kerosene and gas that is about N25,000 to N35,000.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe looked at food for a family of six, that is about N9,000 in a day. For 30 days, that is about N270,000. Look at medical, N50,000 provided there will be no surgery or whatever.
\n\u201cFor clothing, we looked at N20,000. For education, N50,000. I don\u2019t know for those who tried to put their children in private school, they will not be able to cope with this amount. We also have sanitation of N10,000.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think where we have another bulk of the money is transportation. This is because the workers stay in the fringes and because of the cost of PMS, that amounted to N110,000.<\/p>\n
That brought the whole living wage to N615,000 and I want anyone to subject this to further investigation and find out whether there will be any savings when you pay somebody on this rate.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The President of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Joe Ajaero, has expressed his concerns over the announcement made by the federal government regarding a pay increase for civil servants. The FG announced a pay rise ranging from 25 to 35 percent for civil servants across different consolidated salary structures. However, Ajaero believes that this …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001015,"featured_media":25288,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[181],"tags":[1241],"class_list":["post-25287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-politics","tag-nigeria-labour-congress-nlc"],"yoast_head":"\n