Minimum wage: Salaries to gulp N2.6bn in Niger

As the organised labour and the Niger State Government resolved to implement the national minimum wage, the state salary expenditure will now gulp N2.6 billion.

This figure indicates an addition of N500 million monthly on payment of salaries from the initial N2.1billion being spent for the same purpose.

The payment according to the State Head of Service, Hajia Salamatu Abubakar is for the over 26,000 strong workforce excluding those in the local governments.

Abubakar disclosed this while exchanging views with newsmen in Minna where she put the staff strength in the 25 local government councils at 30,000.

She said in line with the terms of the agreement reached with Labour union, government will start the payment of leave grant to workers from May this year but did not indicate the amount involved.

The head of service confirmed government’s plans to rationalise the civil service to put ‘round pegs in round holes’ but assured that workers will not be retrenched.

She said “It is not the intention of the exercise to downsize; trainable ones will be trained, others will be sent to MDAs because some MDAs have need for workers. We have a lot of redundancy. We will try to plug all these.”