By Christel Odili
The organized labour has suspended its planned nationwide strike which was scheduled to commence on 6th November 2018.
This is coming after the first meeting of the tripartite committee set up to arrive at an agreeable minimum wage template, Chairperson of the committee and former Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, Ms Ama Pepple had said while the federal government insisted on N24,000, organized labour maintained its earlier stance of N30, 000.
She however said the government pleaded with labour to call off its planned strike.
According to her, “We have concluded and we have a little challenge with what we call Chapter 5 of our report, that is where we have the numbers and the figures we used for the negotiations and the figures that we concluded with and the committee has two figures: the N24, 000 suggested by the federal government and the N30, 000 given by the organized labour.
On his part, Labour and Employment minister, Chris Ngige said “We are making progress. The governors’ figure should be the figure of the federal government. We are just trying to carry them along. That is why we made the discussions ‘tripartite plus’. It is just because we want to carry them along, otherwise the federal government speaks for governments”.
“Yes, the figures are standing but we know that there are other processes. It has to go through the Federal Executive Council, the National Executive Council and the National Council of State, then an Executive Bill will be transmitted to the National Assembly”, he said.
On whether the strike would go on as planned on Tuesday, he said, “no”, referring all enquiries to labour leaders.
It was reported that after the long hours of meeting, an agreement was reached followed by signing of documents.