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John Adams, Minna
The Organized Labour in Niger state rose from it emergency State Executive Council (SEC) meeting in Minna on Friday and handed a 21 day ultimatum to the state government to pay the 30,000 new minimum wage or face an indefinite action.
The organized labour said it is left with no option than to issue the ultimatum to the government following “its inability to adequately respond to the issues raised in an earlier letter to the government”.
The labour in a letter, titled “notice of 21 days ultimatum of indefinite strike action” jointly signed by the state NLC Chairman, Comrade Yakubu Garba, state Chairman of Trade Union Congress (TUC), Comrade Yunusa D. Tanimu, pointed out that “the organized labour in the state has resolved to once more demand from the government the implementation of the N30,000 new minimum wage, consequential adjustment and also payment of the accrued arrears before Monday, 4th February 2020”.
According to labour, “failure of which it will be left with no other option than to commence an indefinite strike action by midnight of Tuesday, 4th February 2020”.
It could be recalled that the state government had said that its 2020 budget was based on the payment of the N30,000 minimum wage.
The Commissioners for Planning, Mamman Musa and that of Finance, Zakari Abubakar while giving the breakdown of the budget in Minna recently said the budget implementation will commence once the fiscal estimates was passed by the state House of Assembly and assented to by the governor.
The Commissioners declined to say categorically when the minimum wage payment will commence but said “ this is 2020 budget everything in the budget will be implemented in 2020”
They further submitted that the state will not have difficulty in paying the N30,000 minimum wage because “we are already paying N22,500, what we need now is N7,500, we have taken care of that in the budget”.
