N30,000 minimum wage no longer takes Nigerian workers home – NLC

NLC chairman in Cross River, Mr Ben Ukpepi, said on Thursday in Calabar that the take-home N30,000 national minimum wage no longer takes Nigerian workers home.

He made the declaration while commemorating the 2021 International Day for Decent Working Environment.

The 2021 Day has “Just Jobs” as its theme.

Workers associations and trade unions celebrate the Day annually on Oct. 7 when they come together to develop an action plan to promote the idea of decent work.

Ukpepi said it was obvious that the workforce in Nigeria was working in environments that were deficient of decency, adding that something needed to be done.

“Today in Cross River, we are marking the World Decent Work Day as a result of the growing trend of huge deficit of decent work in our society.

“We see this every day in the state in the ‘casualisation’ of workers, retirement without gratuity, promotion without implementation and dilapidated working environment.

“It is sad that even those in the Cross River Civil Service are being converted to casual workers and there is a huge debt of non-payment of gratuity to many of our retired comrades.

“According to the ILO, decent work is a job that is secured with social security and the workers entitled to form trade unions for the protection of their rights,” he said.

He called on the governments, both at the federal and state levels to ensure that there was decent and profitable work for the teeming population of the nation, especially the youths.

Ukpepi added that this was one of the ways to ensure that the youths did not become willing tools in the hands of desperate politicians who abandoned them after winning elections.