Osinbajo presides over minimum wage meeting on Tuesday

The Economic Management Team, which is chaired by the Vice – President , Prof . Yemi Osinbajo , is to hold a special meeting on Tuesday to deliberate on a new minimum wage regime .
The Minister of Labour and Employment , Dr . Chris Ngige , disclosed this to State House correspondents on Friday.

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The Chairman of the Minimum Wage Negotiation Committee and former Head of Service of the Federation , Ms . Amma Pepple, who was also at the State House to brief President Muhammadu Buhari on the progress made by her committee, also said a report on the new minimum wage would soon be submitted to the President .

Ngige , who described as uncharitable the allegation that the government was playing game with the minimum wage , promised that the new minimum wage regime would be in place before the 2019 general elections.

He said , “ Next week , we have an economic management team meeting on Tuesday , specially dedicated to the issue of national minimum wage and it would be chaired by the Vice -President .

“ For anybody to say that this government is stalling or playing games will be uncharitable , because we have done what we are supposed to do .

“ We have the interest of workers at heart ; we have not retrenched anybody , there is no embargo on employment, there is no embargo on promotions , we are paying backlog of promotional arrears , we are backing backlog of transfers and repatriation and the rest of them and we are giving them houses under the Federal Integrated Staff Housing programme and the like .

“ This government is labour – friendly and we will put smiles on their faces before the next election . We are labour activists and we don ’ t want to turn our backs on them . ”

On her part, Pepple said her committee would submit its report to the President before the end of September. She added , “ Everything is on course but we need a definite figure from government and of course we have to carry the states along. So , we need those figures so that we can conclude on the figures we include in our report . ”

The organised labour had demanded an increase in the N 18 , 000 national minimum wage to N 56 , 000 .

The President subsequently in November 2017 inaugurated the National Minimum Wage Committee to recommend a new national minimum wage .
The organised labour recently issued a two – week ultimatum to the government to conclude negotiation on the issue.

But earlier on Thursday , Ngige had alleged that the organised labour was blackmailing and intimidating government to adopt an unrealistic minimum wage .

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