The Presidency on Tuesday expressed optimism that all 36
governors of states of the federation will comply with the new minimum wage
bill signed by President Muhammadu Buhari.
Recall that Buhari had on Thursday signed the N30,000
National Minimum Wage Bill into law and directed that the implementation should
commence immediately.
It replaces the current N18,000 minimum wage, which had been
in place since 2011.
Speaking in an interview on Tuesday, the Senior Special
Assistant to the President on National Assembly Matters (Senate), Senator Ita
Enang, said the President expected all the states to pay the new wage.
Enang said, “For Mr President, he has signed the bill.
Remember that the negotiations took place for over two years and all these
things (funding) were taken into account and they were addressed by the
committee.
“The governors and the local governments were all heard
before eventually it was agreed that N30,000 should be the minimum wage from
the initial demand of labour.
“I don’t think we
should entertain any fears until there is any implementation problem.”
Enang further explained that the only immediate challenge
might be that some of the states had already passed their 2019 budgets before
the new Act came into effect.
For such states, he said the option for them was to consider
supplementary budgets to make up for the difference between N18,000 and
N30,000.
He said, “The only fear may be that some states may have
already passed their budgets (2019) on the basis of N18,000, without the
inclusion of the wage increase; in which case, they may have to consider a
supplementary budget.
“Even the Federal Government today is still operating the
2018 budget, which had N18,000 as the minimum wage. The 2019 budget, which
contains the provision for N30,000, has yet to be passed by the National
Assembly.
“For the FG, it will only do adjustment of the cost when the
budget is passed without needing an additional appropriation.”
Some state governors have however expressed their
willingness to pay the new minimum wage as one of the ways to boost workers’
productivity.
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