The Minister of Labour and Employment, Chris Ngige, said on Tuesday the Federal Government would make public its position on salary increase for civil servants in 2023.....KINDLY READ THE FULL STORY HERE▶

The minister stated this during a chat with State House correspondents in Abuja.

He said the Presidential Committee on Salaries had embarked on a review of workers’ salaries in the country.

The committee, according to him, is expected to come up with salary adjustment next year.

The minister had recently hinted that the government would adjust workers’ salaries to cushion the effect of rising costs of living in the country.

He said: “Yes, I am saying that the Presidential Committee on Salaries is working hand-in-hand with the National Salaries Incomes and Wages Commission.

”The commission is mandated by the Act establishing them to fix salaries, wages, and emoluments in not only the public service.

“If you want their assistance and you are in the private sector, they will also assist you. They have what is called the template for remuneration, for compensation.

”So, if you work, you get compensated, if you don’t work, you will not be compensated.

“So they have the matrix to do the evaluation. They are working with the Presidential Committee on Salaries chaired by the finance ministry and I am the co-chair to look at the demands of the workers.

”Outside this, I said discussions on that evaluation are ongoing.”

The minister added: “It’s a year we can call a year of industrial dispute starting from February’s Academic Staff Union of the Universities (ASUU) strike which was joined by other sister unions in the university system and even the people in the research institutes.

“And thereafter, threats from various unions including the medical doctors association and its youth wing, the National Association of Resident Doctors, JOHESU which is also the Joint Health Sector Union all were asking for a wage increase.

“And asking for wage increase can also be understandable because of what inflation had done in the economy and the attendant cost of living for people who have to be workers in the public sector.”