The President of the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, Joe Ajaero, has bemoaned the inflationary trend in the country, suggesting that the Federal Government should devise a mechanism for the yearly review of wages, especially the national minimum wage.
Ajaero stated this yesterday at the 2nd National Labour Adjudication and Arbitration Forum, organised by the National Employers Consultative Association, NECA, in Abuja.
The NLC President, who spoke on the impact of galloping inflation on the wages of Nigerian workers, said: “No matter what amount you negotiate in the present Nigerian economy, in the next five years, it can’t buy a bag of rice.
“There is a need to tinker with the law providing for five yearly renegotiations of the national minimum wage to allow for a yearly adjustment of wages based on the level of inflation and value of the naira.
“This is important because people have been coming up to say that if we increase salaries, it will affect inflation, but should we keep salaries constant while other variables continue to grow?”
Ajaero also said that workers are dissatisfied with the government’s poor implementation of the wage award, saying that nobody is paying the N35,000 as agreed last year.
According to him, the federal government workers have yet to receive their January salary as of yesterday.
Ajaero wondered why it took the President less than 24 hours to implement the removal of the fuel subsidy but was unable to decide on measures to manage its impact eight months later.
“It took you 24 hours to say fuel subsidy is gone and is taking you more than eight months to decide what to do with it, and you are telling us to give you more time. It took 24 hours to remove fuel subsidy, but after more than eight months, no single CNG bus is on the road,” he said.
Leave a Reply