Gov. Saidu Dakingari

By Saka Ibrahim

Kebbi State chapter of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) Tuesday said it would embark on strike on the new minimum wage from July 11.

The state’s NLC Chairman, Comrade Sadiq Kaoje, while addressing journalists at the Labour House, Birnin Kebbi, after a decision was reached in a meeting between NLC, the Trade Union Congress (TUC) and other unions in the state, said there was no going back on the strike. 

“Following a series of meetings between the state government and the organised labour on the issue of the N18,000 minimum wage, government has not yielded any positive conclusion, the organised labour held a meeting today and after extensive deliberation, we resolved to resume our suspended strike as from Wednesday, July 11, 2012,” he said.

Kaoje explained that since the partial implementation of the minimum wage in March this year, the state government had been paying different salary tables to workers in the state.

Also, the state chairman of TUC, Mohammed Sani Umar, said the organise labour decided to embark on the strike because the state government had failed to implement the N18,000 minimum wage, which had been lingering for over five months. The state government had begun partial implementation of the minimum wage in March, this year by the then Acting Governor, Alhaji Habib Jega, who was the Speaker of the state House of Assembly, when the election of Alhaji Seidu Dakingari, was annulled by the Supreme Court.