Members
of the House of Representatives on Tuesday set the new National Minimum Wage as
N30,000.
They reached the decision a day after
conducting a public hearing on the bill for a new national minimum wage.
The lawmakers at the Tuesday plenary considered
the report of the ad hoc committee that looked at the bill clause by clause.
Passing the bill for the third reading on
Tuesday, the lawmakers unanimously approved the N30,000 recommendation by the
committee in consonance with the resolution by the tripartite committee set up
by President Muhammadu Buhari.
Mr
Buhari in a letter read to the lawmakers by the Speaker, Yakubu Dogara, urged
the amendment of the National Minimum Wage Amendment Act 2011 to raise the
minimum wage payable to a Nigerian worker from N18,000 to N27,000.
A tripartite committee set up by the government
recommended N30,000, but the Council of State later accepted that figure for
federal workers and recommended N27,000 for state and private sector workers.
The
Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), however, rejected the N27,000 and insisted on
N30,000 as the minimum for all workers.
The lawmakers also resolved that the bill would
be effective the day it is assented to by the president.
They also increased the penalty for failure to
pay the minimum wage from N5,000 to N75,000.
The Senate is expected to concur with the
recommendations of the House when it returns from the elections break before
transmitting it to the president.
Mr Dogara had during the public hearing on the
minimum wage said the N30, 000 minimum wage being canvassed is barely enough as
it cannot feed a small family unit.
He said that it is only when workers are
dignified with wages that can provide them minimum comfort that their
productivity level will increase.
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