Minimum Wage: Utomi advises FG, organised labour

A renowned governmental economist, Prof. Pat Utomi says Federal Government and the Organised Labour should instrumentality vantage of the caller minimum wage dialog model to determination Nigeria down the way of thrift and production.

Utomi, Founder, Centre for Values successful Leadership (CVL) and 2007 Presidential Candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC) gave the proposal successful an interrogation with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) connected Friday successful Lagos.

He was reacting to the impasse betwixt the organised labour and the Federal Government connected the caller minimum wage for workers which led to the onslaught declared by labour unions connected Monday.

Utomi said: “Labour indispensable importune connected a melodramatic slash successful the outgo of authorities and concern of the savings made successful accumulation programmes and infrastructure.

“This to facilitate and prolong the worth concatenation of the output based connected our latent comparative vantage from beardown origin endowments.

“On its part, authorities should found what it is paying for. Is it paying arsenic payment for radical who conscionable amusement up?

“Output targets request to beryllium established and hard consequences for maltreatment of positions similar corruption and begging connected the occupation from customers.”.

He said that benchmark for civilian nine monitoring of some parties besides needed to beryllium established with intelligibly outlined consequences.

According to him, the authorities needs to besides travel up with bold initiatives that thrust the modulation to accumulation successful the mode the Operation Feed the Nation (OFN) attempted to bash successful the mid 1970s.

He said that that aboriginal adjustments of minimum wage weighed heavy connected productivity improvements

“Once a due model is established present the template to plug successful productivity gains should beryllium activated

“It should not beryllium a substance of sentiment oregon temper of the leaders connected some sides,” helium added.

NAN recalls that the organised labour’s declaration of nationwide indefinite onslaught connected Monday implicit the caller minimum wage affected each sectors of the economy.

However, with the Federal Government’s look of committedness to raising its projected minimum wage of N60,000 astatine a gathering with labour leaders, the organised labour connected Tuesday announced suspension of the concern enactment for a week for further negotiation.

The authorities and the Organised Private Sector had initially projected N48,000, past N54,000 and N57,000, which were each rejected by labour.

The organised labour had besides projected N615,000 arsenic caller minimum wage, but aboriginal reduced it to N497,000 and past to N494,000, to bespeak the prevailing economical realties.