Committee concludes preliminary work on minimum wage – Ngige

Minister of Labour and Employment, Chris Ngige‎ has said that the Presidential Technical Committee set up to review the national minimum wage has concluded its preliminary assignment.

The technical committee comprises of representatives of Federal Government, organised labour and private sector.

Ngige who disclosed this during a chat with Labour Correspondents in Abuja, however noted that the report of the tripartite committee has not been transmitted to the Presidency.

“The technical committee on minimum wage has just finished but we are yet to hand over to government. That technical committee’s work can now be looked at by the bigger joint committee of labour, institution partners and government.

“We can then form the architectural design, we would then develop the composition of the minimum wage committee, functions and establishment of other colleagues and submit it to Mr President. So we still have a lot to do.

“I am happy that there is an Acting President in the country that would be able to handle it, hence we are doing what we are supposed to do. We have not gotten to the stage of giving to the President, that is what I have said in effect,” the Minister said.

According to him, the Technical Committee is expected to hand over the report to the bigger committee, who would now sit and bring out the architecture for the minimum wage committee by next week.

He explained that the “Minimum wage committee is a constitutional issue. What we are going to provide is for the entire country; minimum wage law is something that is to be looked at critically because it would not only affect government in the federal, but also the government at state, people in the private sector, local government and affect employers of labour.

“It affects labour union, affects everybody and we have to bring people who have no special interest to be members of that committee,” he assured.
Ngige who urged all the relevant stakeholders to be patient in order to avoid mistakes, stressed that the proposed minimum wage legislative framework when enacted “has a life span of five years and within that five years, everybody supposed to conform.
“The last one, everybody is not conforming. States are not paying the minimum wage not to talk of the local governments and private employment. This one, we are putting in place now, everybody is going to agree that this is what we are going to pay.”