During an interview appearance on Channels TV on Wednesday, May 1, the President of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Joe Ajaero, called on the federal government to implement a living wage of ₦615,000 for Nigerian workers.
Ajaero rejected the government’s recent announcement of a salary increase of between 25% and 35% for civil servants across various consolidated salary structures.
He described the increase as mischievous and emphasized the need for a new minimum wage, as the previous minimum wage had expired since April 18.
According to Ajaero, negotiations on the new minimum wage were halted when the government refused to reconvene the meeting of the negotiating committee after it was adjourned.
He said: “We should be in the regime of new minimum wage as of today. Discussions were supposed to have been concluded.
“The 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.
“I 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.”
Ajaero said before arriving at the N615,000 figure as the new minimum wage demand, the Organised Labour evaluated several factors such as electricity, fuel, transport, housing and feeding.
The NLC leader said: “Living 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.”
On what the 615k would consist, he said: “Let 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 — 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.
“We 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.
“For clothing, we looked at N20,000. For education, N50,000. I don’t 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.
“I 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.
“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.”
