The organized labour unions in Kwara state, comprising of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), the Trade Union Congress (TUC) and the Joint Negotiating Council (JNC) have condemned alleged partial implementation of minimum wage for level 1 to 6 officers by the state government.
Speaking with journalists in Ilorin on Tuesday, the NLC chairman, Comrade Aliyu Issa Ore, and other labour leaders said that the state government has violated Labour law with the implementation carried out without signed agreement of the labour movement.
The labour movement recalled that the state government has said that it can only pay officials between levels 1 to 6 when it recently met with Governor Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq based on the state’s revenue allocation, the development it described as unacceptable.
It also described the minimum wage paid to the workers as “take away”, saying it had no payment table showing how the increment was done.
Also speaking the acting chairman of the TUC in the state, Comrade Joseph Tunde and his counterpart in the JNC, Comrade Saliu Sulaiman, said that the state government should come back to negotiation table in the interest of the workers in the state, adding that, “we are not asking for anything outside welfare of workers. It’s the law of minimum wage.
“It’s exactly one week ago we met with the governor. We had expected the state government to come up with implementation we agreed upon at the meeting by giving the labour movement the table to be used in payment of the minimum wage. Even the table used in payment of workers in levels one to six is not known to us. This is totally out of place. There must have been an agreement duly signed by parties involved before implementation. We’re disappointed.
“With the payment of workers in levels one to six in the state and local governments, some parastatals have not paid it, because they don’t have the table or salary structure to impelement it. We need to sit down to know when and how all other levels should be done and signed”, he said.
