The President of the Trade Union Congress, Bobboi Kaigama, who is a Taraba State governorship aspirant on the platform of the All Progressives Congress, has said state governments have no excuse for failing to implement the minimum wage.
He said this shortly after picking his nomination and expression of interest forms at the National Secretariat of the APC, in Abuja, on Friday.
Kaigama said it was unfortunate that at this point in time state governments was still giving excuses when they ought to be preparing to implement the N66,000 minimum wage being proposed by organised labour.
According to him, members of organised labour across Nigeria were already proposing the abrogation of Security Votes, saying some state governors deliberately stoke crisis in their areas so that they can fritter away resources using security vote as a vehicle.
Kaigama said; The issue of minimum wage is legitimate to the Nigerian worker. It is expected that five years down the line, employers are supposed to sit down with their employees represented by trade unions to review their wages. We are two years behind schedule on this. The dollar rate when the last minimum wage came into being was N150. It has now more than doubled that figure.
“Governors are complaining about the proposed minimum wage, but the fact is that you cannot sit down in your own house and be waiting for allocation from the federation account and think you can pay minimum wage. You have to be creative and develop your own resources.
“There is no state as far as the working class is concerned that will say they cannot pay the proposed minimum wage. The money is there but corruption and incompetence would not allow them to pay.”
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