The Federal Workers Forum (FWF) on Monday demanded for a federal minimum wage of N300, 000 monthly as living wage that will reflect the harmonisation of wages and pensions in the federal public service.
FWF made this known in a communiqué issued at the end of an online meeting of federal workers nationwide, signed by the forum’s national coordinator, Comrade Andrew Emelieze.
According to the Forum, “the issues of a fair and just minimum wage will promote social justice, productivity and also help to fight against corruption.
“We are concerned as a federal workforce about the issues of the nascent discussions on the new national minimum wage. We believe strongly that issues of a fair and just minimum wage will promote social justice, productivity and also help to fight against corruption.”
FWF added, “We therefore, while supporting the call for a just living wage for the Nigerian workers, we also demand for a federal living wage that will reflect the harmonization of wages and pensions in the federal public service.
“Over the years, it has been an apartheid discriminatory wage payment in the federal public service. While a few Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDA) are well paid, majority of the MDA’s are discriminated against.”
The Forum maintained that “It’s so bad that the Directors and their likes in the affected MDA’s earn far less than officers very junior to them in the juicy MDAs”, adding, “The case has always been that some MDAs are finance generating and so they must be better paid.
“It is time to stop this discriminatory payment. It is time to terminate this ugly fallacy that promotes segregation and inequality. All work types are complimentary and so there should not be room for any primitive pay discrimination in the federal public service in Nigeria.”
