The Federal Government has announced that it will soon begin monitoring the implementation of the National Minimum Wage Act 2019, which raised Nigeria’s minimum wage from N18,000 to N30,000.
This was disclosed by the Chairman/CEO of the National Salaries, Incomes and Wages Commission, Mr Ekpo Nta, in Abuja, on Thursday.
He added that the monitoring of the Minimum wage would be an interagency collaboration meant to gather evidence on compliance and difficulties faced by stakeholders; and also enable the federal government to plan the next national minimum wage act.
“Those who have complied fully will be put on honours list and sanctions [will come] on those who have not and have no good reason,” Nta said.
He added that the commission was collating real time data in collaboration with the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), in order to render advice to the government at the Federal, State, and Local government levels, and private sectors in the formulation of remuneration policies.
“The commission has carried out remuneration survey in the private health sector, private tertiary education institutions and selected universities in collaboration with the National University Commission in phase one,” he said, adding that phase two would cover the private tertiary polytechnics and colleges of education.
He also revealed that the reason was to compare how much they were paid, allowances, and the services they rendered, among others in the private health and education sectors stating that the commission had collaborated with the Federal Ministry of Health and issued a circular in October for the health sector, requesting the updated statistics of staff in federal hospitals, medical centres, clinics in ministries, departments and agencies in the first phase, and the private health sector in the second phase.
“This will greatly assist the commission in its manning levels and computation of remuneration cost implications and all ministries, departments and agencies are enjoined to cooperate with the commission to ensure the success of these and other exercises as they come up,” he stated.
Recall that in 2020 that the Federal Government had disclosed that it would exempt minimum wage earners from paying personal income tax, in order to stimulate the economy and improve the standard of living of minimum wage earners.
