New Telegraph

PGF DG to Labour: Minimum wage’ll not resolve workforce problems

In the midst of protests for unified minimum wage, the Director-General of the Progressive Governors Forum (PGF), Salihu Lukman, yesterday said no minimum wage would solve the problems of the workforce. He cautioned the organised labour that protests on some issues were needless pointing out the need to resort to negotiations with governments.

Briefing some journalists in his office in Abuja, Lukman, who was once a top official of the Nigeria Labour Congress(NLC), saidlabour’s usual resort to protests and strikes hadbecome out-dated, urging them to perfect their negotiation skills. He emphatically said that protests would not stop the National Assembly from considering bills that had to do with decentralising the minimum wage structure. Labour yesterday staged a protest to the National Assembly, armed with placards with varying inscriptions like; ‘On national minimum wage we stand,’ ‘No to relocation of minimum wage to concurrent list,’ ‘Yes to minimum wage on exclusive list.’

However, speaking on the protest, Lukman said: “We are not saying they should not protest, but this protest is needless. I can guarantee that it is not going to stop the process in the National Assembly. It is not also going to take away the issue. We need to work with them to develop this democracy and we can only do that if every constituent unit and citizens in those units can negotiate with the constituent governments and get results. As it is, we are all frustrated and that is what we should be addressing. This ‘we against them’ that labour is creating does not exist. We should be applying ourselves to resolving the problems of this democracy. There are fundamental problems bigger than we can imagine.”

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