Labour to protest planned removal of minimum wage from exclusive list

• Police warn against mass rally in Abuja
Organised labour at the weekend said it would mobilise workers to protest moves to remove minimum wage from the exclusive to concurrent legislative list.

The President, United Labour Congress (ULC), Joe Ajaero, disclosed this at the pre-2017 May Day seminar organised by ULC, in Lagos.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the concurrent list stipulates that powers are shared jointly by both the central and regional or state governments as stipulated in the Constitution, even though both governments can make law on matters that fall under the concurrent list, the central government is supreme.

This means that in case there is a conflict of law made by both governments, the law will supersedes that of the regional or state government.

According to Ajaero, the move is ill-motivated to deny workers their right to live well which is what some of the governors have been advocating but we will mobilise against them.

He said that If the planned delisting of wage from the exclusive legislative list succeeds, it means that the country would no longer have a national minimum wage.

“It means that each state of the federation will be empowered to legislate and arrive at what should be their respective minimum,” he said.

Meanwhile the Commissioner of Police (CP) in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Musa Kimo has warned those planning to stage a protest during Workers’ Day to desist from it.

A statement by the Police Public Relations Officer (PPRO), Usen Omorodion yesterday in Abuja said intelligence report has shown that a “certain group identified as the indigenous people of Biafra (IPOB) has threatened to take over the street of FCT in the name of registering their protest.”

The police warned that any individual or group found indulging in acts capable of breaching the peace, especially protests that may result in the breakdown of law and order in the nation’s capital would be charged as appropriate.