Festus Osifo, the Trade Union Congress (TUC) President, has stated that increasing the minimum wage for civil servants would not hurt inflation.
Gatekeepers News reports that Osifo who appeared on the ‘Morning Brief’ program on Channels Television on Wednesday, justified his stance by highlighting the increased revenue allocation to states since May 2023, and therefore, he believes that a pay raise is justified.
“If you look today, from May 2023 to date, revenue from the Federation Accounts Allocation Committee (FAAC) to the state governments has tripled,” he said.
“This means the state government has more money to build roads and schools to purchase other items.
“The most critical aspect of production is labour. It is for you to take part of the money and pay workers. That won’t increase inflation because the money will be spent anyway; if you don’t give it to workers, it will be spent on other projects.
“Giving workers what is due them won’t necessarily worsen inflation.”
The TUC has proposed N615,000 as the new minimum wage for workers.
Osifo’s comments come at a time when Nigerians are facing economic hardship due to the removal of subsidies on petrol and the unification of the exchange rate windows.
Earlier, on April 26, Osifo had stated that expecting the federal government to announce a new minimum wage on May 1 was unrealistic.
However, on April 30, the government approved an increase of between 25 percent and 35 percent salary increase for civil servants on the six consolidated salary structures.
