New Minimum Wage Breakdown:Labour Fingers Food & Transportation Costs As Highest Expenses of Nigerian Workers

The organized labour in Nigeria, consisting of the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, and the Trade Union Congress, TUC, has released details of its proposed N615,000 minimum wage, fingering cost of feeding and transportation as highest expenses by Nigerian workers.

The details were contained in a statement released by the NLC on Friday.

According to the statement, Food and Transportation took the larger proportion of the proposed minimum wage.

The breakdown showed that N270,000 (for thirty days) was benchmarked for Food and N110,000 for Transportation.

Other expenditures captured are Electricity/Power (N20,000), Accommodation (N40,000), Utility Water (N10,000), Kerosene/Gas (N35,000), Clothing (N20,000), Education (N50,000), Sanitation (N10,000) and Medicals (50,000) resulting to a total sum of N615,000.

Open Television Naija recalls that Festus Osifo, President of TUC and Joe Ajaero, the President of NLC, in separate statements, had revealed the N615,000 minimum wage proposal.

Meanwhile, in his May Day message to workers, President Bola Tinubu said an upward review of the minimum wage is imminent.

The new minimum proposed by labour is coming amidst rising cost of living in the country with which Nigerian workers grapple, alongside rising inflation and fluctuations in the value of the naira against the dollar in addition to the prevailent fuel scarcity and hike in the price of petrol.