New minimum wage: Sign N30,000 bill before May Day or face strike – Workers warn Buhari

The Association of Senior Civil Servants of Nigeria (ASCSN), Oyo State chapter, has condemned the delay in the signing of the N30,000 minimum wage into law by President Muhammad Buhari.

The lower and upper chambers of the National Assembly had earlier in the year passed the N30,000 minimum wage bill as against the N27,000 recommendation of the council of states.

The bill has, however, been awaiting presidential assent.

In March, Buhari received the report of the Technical Advisory Committee on the implementation of the new National Minimum Wage, at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.

Buhari had on January 9 inaugurated the advisory committee chaired by an economist and financial expert, Mr Bismarck Rewane.

A statement at the weekend by Oyo State Chairman of ASCSN, Comrade Babatunde Balogun, said: “We won’t be able to assure the President industrial peace and harmony in the country if the passed minimum wage bill is not assented to by the President before May-Day celebration on 1st of May, 2019’’.

Balogun lamented that the Nigerian workers have gone through harsh economic and financial situation since the inception of the Buhari led All Progressives Congress (APC) government, saying ‘’one would have expected the government to pay the resilience and unbearable economic situation of workers with speedy assent of the passed Bill into law’’.

‘’But if the government failed to assent before the May day celebration, we won’t be able to assure the government industrial peace in the country.

“The workers economic conditions have moved from bad to worse under this government and all we can get now is this unwarranted and avoidable delay in assenting to the passed new minimum wage regime that we’ve been battling for 18 months now.

“This is high act of wickedness and is unacceptable to us’’, Balogun stressed.