The new minimum wage for workers in the country may have been fixed for N30,000 as the committee finalised its negotiation last Friday.

This was even as the committee is set to present the report which has N30,000 recommendation to President Muhammadu Buhari any moment from now.

Though the Organised Labour is yet to issue any statement on the outcome of the two-day meeting, a reliable source, however, said the committee has finalised its work.

Recall that members of the Organised Labour had embarked on a seven-day warning strike penultimate week after the expiration of 14-day ultimatum, and the strike was suspended after assurance from the government that the committee would return to the negotiation table last Thursday and Friday.

The source said the committee arrived at N30,000 after so much arguments and face-off between the representatives of the Organised Labour and government.

According to the source, the government had come up with N24,000, which the workers’ representatives bluntly rejected.

“This may be because they want to be in agreement with the Organised Private Sector who had proposed N25,000, but Labour refused and told them that it was unacceptable” he said.

He, however, said that Labour, which had earlier proposed N66,500 during last week’s meeting, later scaled down to N38,000 and stuntly said that would be the least it could accept for the Nigerian workers.

The source explained further that it was the Organised Private Sector that now played the role of an arbiter by adjusting the figure to N30,000.

He noted that though the Presidency only inaugurated the committee to recommend what it feels should be appropriate new minimum wage, he stressed that labour would not accept anything below the N30,000 submitted by the committee.

•Excerpted from Daily Sun report

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