The government has been urged to urgently implement the new minimum wage as workers across the globe mark the Workers’ Day.
Eneruvie Enakoko, the Chief Executive of Conscience Report, stated this in a statement on Monday while urging the government to also provide jobs for the teeming unemployed youth in the country
Enakoko said: “As the nation joins its counterparts across the globe to commemorate May Day, we ask the Nigerian government to be true to what it said on paper, and implement an acceptable living wage, and improved working conditions for Nigerian workers in line with its constitutional obligations.
“Over the years, the deplorable working condition of Nigerian workers has worsened. The gulf between the rich and the poor, the haves and the haves not, has widened.
“The sad irony is the annual ritual where organised labour will join government in stadiums all over the nation to deliver homilies, and mouth pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities, only to return to business as usual without matching words with action, and taking concrete measures to keep commitments and obligations.
“The yawning gap between promise and fulfillment is appalling indeed.”
Enakoko stated that he global statistics of wages reveals that Nigeria has one of the lowest paid workers in the world and the situation has, especially, deteriorated in the last couple of years.
He added: “The average Nigerian lives on less than a dollar per day. Even the N18,000 (US$115) monthly minimum wage signed into law two years ago, which still falls far short of a guaranteed monthly income, is yet to be implemented fully by government at all levels.
“All of this inhuman and degrading condition in the midst of plenty accounts for the corroding hatred and extreme violence in our country today, breeding the almajiris, delinquents and child labour.
“The streets of Nigeria are teeming with teenagers and young children who are supposed to be in school either hawking or selling all manner of goods to augment the upkeep of their families, or outrightly stealing, and unleashing mayhem and violence.
“Every sane society will rise up against this, yet this is what our government is doing to our children, because it treats its citizens less than animals. It is a flagrant abuse of constitutional powers, and a willful contravention of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) Convention, No. 138 and 182 which frowns seriously at all forms of Child Labour.
“The wages of Nigerian workers are of no use and can’t even take them home; added to this is the contrasting developments in collective bargaining coverage-the police, armed forces and workers in the informal sector which constitute the bulk of the economy are not eligible to bargain collectively. Nigerian workers are thus underpriced and undervalued.”
Enakoko urged President Goodluck Johnathan to use this May Day celebration to uplift the standard of living of Nigerian workers, adding: “We therefore call on the government to keep up its mandate with the Nigerian people, and as a minimum demonstration of good faith, we demand that the Jonathan Administration to ensure rapid implementation of the N18,000 (US$115) minimum wages at all levels of government, set up a think tank committee to periodically review the minimum wage in line with the ILO guaranteed living wage standards rather than wait for strikes and industrial actions before adopting a fire brigade approach that ends up solving nothing; Initiate a job programme to create jobs and absorb our teeming unemployed with a guaranteed income and to set up set up a welfare programme to provide monthly for those who in the meantime have no jobs, and for those who cannot work.”