2nd May, 2015
Governor Babatunde Fashola of Lagos State on Friday urged the Federal Government to provide essential amenities like electricity so as to reduce workers’ expenditure on them.
“As a government, we must provide the basic infrastructure that will give a better life to workers,” Fashola said this during the 2015 Workers Day Commemoration in Lagos.
“We must look at the things that take away the disposable incomes of the Nigerian workers,” he added.
According to him workers are expending much of their salaries to enjoy some services that government are supposed to provide them cheaply.
“Every worker that generates his own electricity is spending money that could have been used for something else,” he said, stressing that the power sector was a viable source of reducing unemployment in the country.
On salary parity, the governor noted that some workers in certain government-owned enterprises receive better remuneration than others. “It is not in all cases that Nigerian workers are underpaid.
“There are some sections of Nigerian workmen that receive very competitive wages even more that what their contemporaries get in other parts of the world,” Fashola said.
Alhaji Tajudeen Agbede, Vice-Chairman, Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Lagos Council in an interview with NAN, urged workers to cooperate with their employers.
“We believe that things will be better for workers and that government should know that it cannot solve our problems alone.
“We promise to give our support to them too,” said Agbede, who is also the Lagos State Chairman, National Union of Road Transport Workers.
Mrs Dominga Odebunmi, Director-General, Lagos State Safety Commission, urged workers employers of labour to imbibe safety measures in work places in order to forestall hazards.
Odebunmi said employers of labour needed to allocate more funds toward workers’ safety in their work places.
“There is the need to increase expertise, human and financial resources to improve safety of workers.
“It is also pertinent that our national lawmakers pass the National Occupation Bill,” she said.