FG To Transmit New Minimum Wage Bill To National Assembly Jan. 23

The Federal Government says it will transmit the new minimum wage bill recommended by the Tripartite Committee to the National Assembly on January 23, 2019.

Minister of Labour and Employment, Senator Chris Ngige, confirmed this to journalists on Tuesday after a meeting with the leadership of the organised labour in Abuja.

He assured the labour leaders that the government will be presenting the recommendations of the tripartite committee to the States Security Council in the coming weeks.

According to him, the whole process that precedes the transmission of the bill to the National Assembly will be completed before January 23.

Speaking after the meeting with the leadership of organised labour, Ngige said: “We have made progress. It has been difficult to arrive at a date because there are processes to follow on the bill.

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“We have to go to the Federal Executive Council with a council memo on the bill. After that, we will go to the National Economic Council and the Council of State.

“We can control the Federal Executive Council date, the same with NEC, but for the National Council of State, the President has to look at his own time-table and will inform past Heads of State and Justice of the Federation.

“This can take two weeks but we are trying to see if we can accommodate all these meetings by next week because we cannot do Council of State meeting again this week. Immediately after that meeting (Council of State), we will transmit.”

However, when the meeting reconvened and after several hours of deliberations, the minister said: “As for the transmission of the executive bill to the National Assembly, the government will religiously implement all the processes that will enable us transmit this bill within the stipulated time.

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“We have a target time of January 23, 2019, and we hope that all things being equal, the government will be able to do so. We will take all statutory meetings of the Federal Executive Council, National Economic Council and the National Council of State meetings to enable us transmit the bill on the new national minimum wage.

“I thank the labour unions for their understanding and appeal to them that the threats should come down. Protests are no longer necessary.”

On his part, the President of the NLC, Ayuba Wabba, stressed the importance of keeping to the timeline to avoid further disagreements between labour and the government.

Wabba said: “We appreciate the role of the Minister of Labour and Employment to get this process to where it is. We have made a lot of sacrifices and commitment spending three days on meetings on this issue.

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“We have finally been able to reach a clear understanding on the processes and timeline for this bill to be transmitted. We are committed to the process and hope that the timeline will be respected. We will put this across to our organs and give them all the details contained in the memorandum of understanding.

“You will recall that our demand is for the bill to be transmitted to NASS. We want a firm commitment so that we don’t come round a cycle. We want the agreement to be documented and signed by government representatives. With that, we can follow up on the process, hoping.

“This thing has been on the table for more than two years and having submitted the report, we expect that the bill should have been submitted. The NASS will be back on January 16 from their recess, so on or before January 23, the bill must have been transmitted.”

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