The Niger State chapter of the Nigerian Union of Teachers (NUT) has called for the full implementation of the new minimum wage and it’s consequential adjustments for all categories of its members.
The demand followed the non payment of the 18 percent increase across the board for senior civil servants as approved during negotiations with organised labour.
Rising from an emergency State Wing Executive Council (SWEC) meeting held in Minna, the state capital on Friday, the union lamented the ill and unfair treatment accorded to its members thus making teachers the least paid workforce in the state.
A communique released after the meeting, which was jointly signed by the State Chairman Comrade Ibrahim Umar and Secretary, Comrade Labaran Garba, said
“qualified teachers” were exempted from this payment when the February salary was released to workers.
The union also condemned in “strong terms the new salary table released as it did not protect the interest of the Qualified Teachers Salary Structure”
The communique therefore asked the state government to “in the interest of industrial peace, direct the full implementation of the 18 percent consequential adjustment increase and the union’s earlier denied 25 percent salary increase to teachers in Niger state”.
The meeting “resolved and directed” the leadership of the union at all levels to “collate teachers’ complaints arising from the new payment of the February 2020 salary and forward such complaints to the state secretariat within 7 days”.
The communique, however, appealed to all its members “to remain guided and imbibe the spirit of cooperation understanding and solidarity as the leadership will ever remain focused and resolute in pressing home it’s members demands.”
What government said earlier
Governor Abubakar Sani Bello had promised that his government would start paying the new National Minimum Wage at the end of January.
Governor Bello said that a committee had been set up already and considerable progress had been made in the negotiation to begin the implementation of the new minimum wage.
“At the moment, our top priority is to address those that have been affected directly by the minimum wage and what it means is, anyone who is below the minimum wage policy.
“I have given the directive that it should be implemented this January [2020], so that those that are entitled or fall within the class of minimum wage will get it”, he had said in January.
According to him, those that are not directly affected by the N30, 000 minimum wage will be taken care of in the next phase which is the consequential adjustment.
“If you implement the new minimum wage, then you find out that there will be the need for consequential adjustments for all,” he said.
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