Implementation of the minimum wage will commence this month in Sokoto State, Governor Aminu Tambuwal has disclosed.
Tambuwal revealed this at the presentation of the report by the committee on the implementation of the new minimum wage and consequential adjustments.
He put the new Wage Bill of the state at above N324 million as against the sum of N340 million requested for by labour union in the state.
The governor commended the committee members who included labour collective and government representatives for their maturity, patience and patriotism to the people of the state.
A meeting of the state executive council had been scheduled for Monday to consider the report, he said.
Tambuwal recalled that the state government had discovered a disparity in the salary data of the state civil service commission, the Ministry of Finance and the office of the Head of Service, thus took measures to harmonise all the data.
He said the State Government had to conduct a wide scale verification exercise to weed out ghost workers, child workers and bogus employment offer syndicates.
The Governor said the issuance of payslips to workers, was also introduced as a measure to tackle the situation.
He assured that state government would pay all the workers owed backlogs of salary following the meticulous process of the fiscal discipline measures it embarked upon.
Chairman of the Minimum Wage Implementation, Alhaji Muhammad Namadina Abdulrahman said the committee recommended among others, salary and skills assessment of staff and decentralization of salary payments.
He said it also suggested the establishment of a revenue generation system by the state government.
