The Senate on Friday, June 14, said it will grant accelerated consideration and passage of the Bill on new minimum wage being proposed by President Bola Tinubu.
The chairman, Senate Committee on Media and Public Affairs, Senator Yemi Adaramodu (APC-Ekiti South) disclosed this while answering questions from reporters in Abuja.
Tinubu had in his speech to mark Democracy Day on June 12, said he will send the Bill after due agreement with the leadership of the Nigeria Labor Congress and Trade Union Congress on an acceptable amount.
Adaramodu said even though the Senate will ensure that the proposed minimum wage bill is not delayed, it will however be subjected to accepted legislative processes before passage.
He said the Senate will pass the Bill once it is transmitted to it by the President without compromising on standard legislative procedures in lawmaking.
“But it depends on the content of the Bill because the bill will go through the crucibles of the passage of a Bill.
“We are not going to sit down and just say that the Bill has been passed. We will go through the crucibles. So within the time, if there are no oppositions from outside, if there are no oppositions from within, there can never be opposition from within because it’s going to be a kind of agreement between Labour, government and organised private sector.
“So once that one is there and then it comes to us, so definitely we will go through the processes without delay and make sure that Nigerian workers get their deal.”
On whether the Senate will take into consideration the position of the State Governments that they cannot afford to pay the N62,000 already proposed by the Federal Government as minimum wage, Adaramodu said: “Since they are all meeting, we know that at the end of the day, all of them will agree on the figure because when it’s an executive bill, an executive bill means state executive, federal executive and even local government executive.
“So definitely there is going to be an agreement. So once there’s an agreement, the bill will come and I don’t think any of the components of the negotiating bodies will oppose the agreed figure at the end of the day.
“So we don’t have any fear about that. You know when you are negotiating, you negotiate from various parameters and parallels. So at the end of the day, all the lines will converge and meet at a concentric point.
So that’s where we now come in. We come in at the end of the tunnel and then we’ll pick it from there and make it into law so that we can have a better deal for Nigerian workers.
Source : Nation Newspaper
