In response to the growing demand by organised labour for a review of the Country’s minimum wage, the Federal government on Wednesday set up a 29 man tripartite committee to review the minimum wage structure.
Dr. Chris Ngige, the Minister for Labour and Employment disclosed the information to newsmen at the end of Wednesday’s federal executive council meeting chaired by Acting President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo.
The minister said that the Council after exhaustive deliberations on the report of the technical committee which he chaired, approved the setting up of the tripartite committee.
The tripartite committee will be chaired by a seasoned technocrat appointed by the Federal Government, which will also nominate five of the members, while six state governors will also be members.
Ngige said, “The matter needs to be thrashed out by all stakeholders, because already, employers under the umbrella of the Nigeria Employers’ Consultative Association have rejected the N56,000 minimum wage proposal.”
On his part, the Minister of Budget and National Planning, Udo Udoma, said the 2017 Appropriation Bill, which the National Assembly transmitted to the Executive last Friday, was still undergoing analysis.
“When the budget is approved, we first analyse it, review it and then make our recommendations to the President. We are working hard, we are still in the analysing process and getting inputs from the ministers,” he said.
Udoma described the Gross Domestic Product figures released by the National Bureau of Statistics on Tuesday as encouraging and an indication that the government’s interventions were working.
“This is the best figure released in four quarters and there is still enough time to make more efforts to stimulate the economy,” the minister stated.
According to him, the government would continue with the implementation of the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan.
“We believe that the interventions we are making and the steps we are taking are in the right direction.
“The results that were released were for one quarter. There are still three quarters and we have enough time to do better; we will work hard to continue to stimulate the economy to meet our target.”
