The Bayelsa State House of Assembly has expressed support for the position of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and Trade Union Congress (TUC) on moves by the House of Representatives to scuttle the minimum wage law.
“Well, I want to say that we are in this together,” Bayelsa Assembly Speaker Abraham Ingobere told labour leaders on a rally who marched to the Assembly Complex to present a letter in Yenagoa on Wednesday.
Ingobere, who was represented by Ebiowou Koku-Obiyal, representing Yenagoa Constituency 2 and immediate past NLC state chairman, assured that the legislature would do the needful when the bill got to them.
He described the attempt to transfer the minimum wage law from the exclusive list to the concurrent list as a constitutional matter and that before taking any action, the bill would come to the House.
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Earlier, NLC state chairman, John Ndiomu, read the letter he presented to the speaker, saying the “bill is tantamount to a negation of the efforts of the Nigerian working class in the past forty years to free itself from the cruel manacles of slave wages, savagery working conditions and slave drivers”.
Ndiomu described the national minimum wage as a tool for social inclusion and listed three reasons for the implications of moving the minimum wage from the exclusive to the concurrent list of the constitution.
He argued that the move would be a license for state governors to drag the country to the era of ridiculous slave wages, resulting in the exponential of working-class poor and lead to the exclusion of the privacy of the private sector.
Labour, therefore, prayed the Speaker to use his good judgment to take account of the gravity as it would hamstring Nigeria’s efforts to reduce poverty and inequality and propel labour to embark on several industrial actions.
The protest rally began from OMPADEC, Amarata to the House of Assembly and wound up at the Bayelsa State Secretariat with one placard reading, Recall Garba Datti from House of Reps.
