Sokoto State has joined 10 other states in the country to pay the minimum wage of N30, 000 to workers in the state, with the state government vowing to embark on a wide-scale verification exercise to weed out ghost workers, child workers and syndicates making bogus employment offers.
Governor Aminu Waziri Tambuwal disclosed this on Thursday evening at the signing and submission of the report on the minimum wage by the committee on the implementation of the new wage structure and consequential adjustments, which it established to advise it on the matter.
The monthly wage bill of the state will now be above N324 million as against the sum of N340 million requested for by labour union collective in the state, the governor said.
Nigeria labour unions have threatened to protest against state governments that fail to implement the new minimum wage of N30,000 per month and the consequential adjustments for other workers.
Announcing that his administration would commence implementation of the minimum wage from this month, Tambuwal scheduled a meeting of the state executive council meeting for Monday to consider the report.
He said the government was poised to “embark on the verification of unscheduled staff and the sharp practice of sale of letters offers of employment to unwary citizens,” stressing also that “a situation where children are on the payroll of the government will not be condoned”.
Prior to the negotiation that ushered the new wage regime, the state government had discovered a disparity in the salary data between the state civil service commission, the ministry of finance and the office of the head of service.
“This made me to look into the situation and we decided to harmonize all the data,” leading up to the taking of steps to introduce the issuance of payslips to workers, “a first in the history of the state,” Tambuwal explained.
As he promised to pay all the workers owed backlogs of salary as a result of the meticulous process of the fiscal discipline measures embarked upon by the government, the governor commended the labour unions and those on the government side who sat on the committee for their maturity, patience and patriotism to the people of the state.
In his remarks, the chairman of the minimum wage implementation, Alhaji Muhammad Namadina Abdulrahman, summarised the suggestions of the committee to the state government as “salary and skills assessment of staff, decentralization of salary payments and the establishment of a revenue generation system by the state government.
The other states that have concluded discussions on consequential adjustments, according to Nigeria Labour Congress, are Adamawa, Bauchi, Borno, Jigawa, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Kebbi, Lagos and Ebonyi.
