Hardship: Labour Kicks As 20 States Deny Workers Wage Award

Eight months after the Federal Government commenced payment of N35,000, a wage award in addition to N30,000 minimum wage to workers, and urged state governments to replicate it, 15 states are yet to do so while seven paid briefly and stopped.

The wage award was to lessen the burden of economic hardship on the citizenry pending the implementation of a new minimum wage.

The Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, described the refusal of some states to pay the wage award to their workers as the height of insensitivity, lamenting the suffering workers were going through as a result of the anti-poor policies of the government.

Meanwhile, 15 states are paying sums ranging from N10,000 to N40,000 to their workers as wage awards or salary increments.

States that are not paying include one in the South-East, four in the South-South, three in the North-East, two in the North-Central and five in the North-West.

Meanwhile, states that paid wage awards for one to four months and stopped include Delta, Niger, Plateau, Kaduna, Bauchi and Nasarawa.

On the other hand, states that are paying are Lagos, Edo, Bayelsa, Imo, Enugu, Anambra, Ebonyi, Ondo, Osun, Ogun, Oyo, Ekiti, Kano, Kwara, Cross River and Taraba.