By Our Reporter
The governor of Kaduna State, Malam Nasir El-Rufai, has accused the Nigerian Labour Congress of being hypocritical in its call for a strike in the state over the rightsizing of workforce that his government has embarked on.
He also alleged that the Ayuba Waba-led NLC that has mobilised workers in Kaduna State to down tools is an affiliate of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, which according to him has become invisible in the nation’s political space.
The governor stated this against the backdrop of an investigation which shows that NLC has not paid workers in its employ the national minimum wage more than two years after it was approved by President Muhammadu Buhari.
To the governor, the fact that his government has been paying its workers the minimum wage but the NLC which is at the forefront of the struggle for the adoption of the new minimum wage has yet to do the same reeks of hypocrisy at a time the Union is mobilizing workers in Kaduna State to embark on a strike action.
The Kaduna State government has always taken pride in the fact that it was one of the few states to pay its workers the minimum wage immediately it was approved.
In a post on his twitter handle, El-Rufai stated, “FATHERS OF ALL HYPOCRITES: Kaduna will wait for you all – the invisible PDP & affiliates like the hypocritical NLC that is yet to implement the National Minimum Wage Act, 2019 for its own employees.”
The governor’s comment came after it was revealed by an online newspaper that workers at the NLC headquarters threatened to go on strike because the NLC management led by Waba had yet to pay them the minimum wage after waiting for it for two years.
In a report in the National Record, it is stated that many workers of the NLC are displeased with the NLC management. In an interview the said workers said, “I can tell you with certainty that at the moment, we are not sure if Congress will implement the new minimum wage because we simply don’t understand what is going on. We are consulting at individual levels on what to do.”
This turn of event comes to the fore as the NLC mobilised its Kaduna State affiliates to embark on a one-week industrial action to stop the Kaduna State government from rightsizing its work force that it says takes as monthly wages 93 percent of monthly allocation from the federal government.
