Obaseki N40,000 Raised Minimum Wage

 ....A show of sensitivity, labour friendliness on the part of Government.

By EICO

Civil Service is the driving force of every government at all levels in the process of development. Civil service, whether Federal, State or Local level plays vital roles in the political, economic and the overall social development in governance which includes the formulation and execution of government policies and programmes.

Knowing fully well that the output of the civil service in government mirrors the performance of the government in power, Governor Godwin Nogheghase Obaseki right from the beginning of his administration in 2016 leverages on this prospects of getting the best from the civil servants through motivation to actualized the desire needs of the people in the state.

Governor Godwin Obaseki, a technocrat of international repute with a lot of experience in the management of human, materials and financial resources through his policymaking decisions has brought to bare his proactive, pragmatic and circumspective strategies that have been impactful and results oriented  

Some of the motivational factors that created a robust relationship between the Obaseki administration and the general labour force in the state includes; prompt payment of workers salaries and pensions, Since the inception of the administration it has becomes a tradition that all  workers and pensioners in the public service receive their earnings, latest every 25th of every month.

The Governor also ensures that he puts to rest, the incessant black attires protests the pensioners use to engaged in at the Oba Ovoranmwen Square to registered their displeasure over their reckless abandonment by the past administrations that were careless about their wellbeings, the government also puts in place, a remedial strategy that would addressed the accumulated pensioners and gratuities to ameliorate the plight of the senior citizens.

Governor Obaseki's administration also established an efficient and productive Contributory Pension Scheme (CPS), with this development, the challenges faced by Edo pensioners is now gradually becoming a thing of the past. With this unprecedented feat, Edo State was recently named among other three states earlier this year as the only states among the 36 others that have remitted their workers pension contributions by the National Pension Commission (PenCom).

Further more, the Obaseki-led government sometime ago also introduced the Social Health Insurance Scheme that would guarantees efficient and affordable healthcare services for all civil servants in the state.                           

 Fostering the government-labour relations and the industrial harmony that has been existing between Obaseki-led administration and the labour in the state, the Governor is currently constructing a gigantic edifice being developed for the Trade Union Congress (TUC) and Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) on Ikpoba Slope, Benin City. The Governor being conscious of the fact that governance is continuum, the Obaseki-led administration has also completed more than 40 years abandoned buildings and reconstructed and rehabilitated others within the premises of the Edo State Secretariat fitted with 21st century equipments making the environment siren, conducive and comfortable for workers to explore and become more productive. So also, in order to further consolidates on the continuous reform in the system, the government also reconstructed new edifices, fitted with Information Communication Technologies (ICT) and other equipments at the former staff training centre and established a training institute, named John Odigie-Oyegun Institute of Public Administration for the training and retraining of civil servants in the state, and in addition to that, due to the necessity of power, a 24-Hour power provider Ossiomo plant has been connected to all public institutions in the state. 

In order to further strengthen the system, series of recruitments have been carried out by the government to inject new blood with fresh ideas into the system.

The most recent one is the lifting of state civil service minimum wage from lawfully recognised N30,000 to N40,000 at this year's labour day celebration making Edo state the first state in Nigeria to increase the workers minimum wage after the Covid-19 pandemic, which ravaged the world economy during the period under review, the economic effect of the pandemic on the state workers despite the drastic drop in the monthly allocation accrue to states which is making it impossible for some states to cope with the stipulated N30,000 amidst while others are even considering the reduction of their work force in their various states.

Inspite of all these challenges, Governor Godwin Obaseki keeps changing the narratives of the Edo State Civil service that once upon a time was redundant and obsolete in its activities to become a 21st century digitised civil service, so far, so good Governor Godwin Obaseki has shown that to lead, is to be out in front, breaking new ground, vanguishing new worlds and proceeding away from the status quo, all these gear towards Making Edo Great Again.