Niger begins payment of wage award to workers
The Niger State Government has commenced the payment of wage awards to the state workforce.
This followed the directive of President Bola Tinubu on Monday during his visit to the state to commission projects.
The Commissioner for Information, Binta Mamman, made this known on Thursday in an interview with The PUNCH.
“I want to inform you that Governor Mohammed Bago has directed the immediate commencement of the wage award this morning. Workers in the state and all the local governments in the state are beneficiaries.
“The state has over 80,000 workers at both the state and the local governments and all these workers are being paid N20,000 wage award to each of them. The government will be paying over N1.6 billion every month to the workers.
“The payment was a directive from Mr President during his visit to Niger State to commission the State mechanised farming project and the airport that was renamed after him. I am speaking with so much confidence because some workers have shown me their alert this morning,” she said.
The N20,000 flat rate is an agreement reached between the state’s organised Labour and the state government which led to the call of the last industrial action declared by Labour barely 24 hours after its commencement.
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The PUNCH learnt that workers in the local governments have started receiving their wage award from Thursday (today) while the payment for pensioners will follow subsequently.
Some civil servants who received the alert, however, lamented that they received less than the N20,000 due to deductions from the banks which ranged from N1000 and N900 from the amount.
The Niger State Nigeria Labour Congress Chairman, Idrees Lafene, who spoke with The PUNCH on Wednesday confirmed that Bago agreed to commence payment at the end of March. He, however, confirmed that his members have begun to receive alerts.
“We agreed on an N35,000 wage award. it was the Governor that wrote N20,000 that we are collecting and will do the needful soon,” Lafene said.
Tinubu told the governors during his speech at the commissioning that with the resources available to all the states of the Federation they were in a position to pay the N30,000 wage award and the existing salaries of their workers.
“I am not giving you order, I am only appealing to you all the sub-nationals, whatever the civil servants are taking now, and the wage award it will relieve the people,” he said.
