You Can't Fight Corruption With Poorly Paid Workers, Textile Union Leader Tells Buhari
General Secretary, National Union of Textile Garment Workers of Nigeria
(NUTGTWN), Mr Issa Aremu, Sunday, said Nigerian workers needed wage
increase that would lead to recovery.
Aremu in a statement issued in Kaduna, said that Nigeria might not
overcome the recession with the existing miserable pay of workers and
pensioners.
The statement read:
“Organised labour calls for prompt payment of the existing salaries by
states and local governments and urgent wage increase in both the private
and public sectors.
“Link with productivity improvement is the smartest and quickest ways to
stimulate the nation's economy.
“Recent CBN report on the economy and to a large extent, the latest report
of National Bureau of Statistics observes that weak demand for goods is
one factor responsible for low capacity utilisation of many private sector
companies.
“So to overcome the economic crisis, workers whose wages buy basic goods
and services must not only be paid on time but their wages must be
increased,'' he said.
“To this extent President Muhammadu Buhari must urgently constitute the
tripartite committee on the review of the current national minimum wage,''
he said.
The labour leader said that Nigerian workers had long been in depression
before the present recession because of the crisis of compensation
manifesting in salary arrears.
He said that the collapse of wages caused by massive naira devaluation and
price inflation of close to 20 per cent needed to be redressed.
Aremu said that the minimum wage of N125 in 1981 was equivalent to 240
dollars.
“Then we had stable strong exchange rate and lower inflation. In real
terms, workers in 1981 earned more than the current N18, 000.00 minimum
wage,'' he said.
He said that the 2010 negotiated national minimum wage of N18, 000 was
about 120 dollars in 2010.
“With naira devaluation, it has unacceptably fallen to less than 45
dollars in 2016, a quarter of its nominal value in 2016 and less than 1
per cent of its value in 1981 about 40 years ago worsening income poverty.
“For Nigerian economy to recover, there must be massive public spending in
reconstruction and significantly mass spending by working people through
improved wages,'' Aremu said.
“You cannot fight corruption with poorly paid workforce; poorly paid
worker is not only hungry but rightly angry and even vulnerable to corrupt
practices,'' Aremu said.
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