House of Representatives has approved N30, 000 as the new National Minimum Wage, as the Bill to that effect scaled third reading on its floor yesterday.
The Bill which seeks to repeal the national minimum wage Act of 1981 (as amended), and enact the national minimum wage Bill, 2019 was recently sent to the National Assembly by President Muhammadu Buhari, though with a recommendation for approval of N27,000 as the minimum take-home-pay for Nigerian workers.
The House in passing the Bill, has however increased penalty for employers’ failure to comply with the new proposed law from N5, 000 as contained in the extant Act to N75, 000, while it was emphatically stressed in the Bill that it will take immediate effect, from the date the President assent to it as law.
Presenting synopsis into report of the Ad hoc committee that worked on the Bill, its chairman and Deputy Speaker of the House, Yussuff Lasun yesterday explained that now the minimum wage has increased from N18,000 to N30,000 (if signed into law), it was in the opinion of the
Federal Ministry of Finance, the income earners at lowest level could be taxed.
Speaker of the House, Yakubu Dogara in his remarks after passage of the Bill commended the committee for a job well done. “I have to commend the Deputy Speaker and members of the committee for their commitment, as well as the House. Some of us even have to suspend our campaigns in order to be around, and this has indeed shown that this is the House of the people”, he said.
The Speaker called for a speedy transmission of the Bill to the Senate for concurrence, adding that if any adjustment is done to the document as done by the House by the Senate, the House will not hesitate to
raise a conference team to harmonise the differences, and adopt same.
