Delay in implementation of new minimum wage affecting our morale —Teachers

As states across Nigeria commenced another academic session, the Academic Staff Union of Secondary Schools (ASUSS), has warned that delay in the implementation of the N30, 000 new national minimum wage will automatically affect the morale of teachers.

Addressing newsmen in Ado-Ekiti on Friday, the National President of the Union, Mr. Samuel Omaji, said improved wage, working tools and condusive teaching – learning environment, were fundamental impetuses that can make teachers give the best in academic environment.

ASUSS also decried the poor infrastructure, inadequate public schools and lack of basic teaching aids, including modern laboratories in most of the secondary schools across the country.

“The foot dragging of government on the minimum wage issue and poor attention to secondary schools generally appear to us, a calculated attempt to take education off the reach of the common man, as the private schools continue to soar in the face of lackadaisical government attitude to funding public schools.

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“It is inexplicable that after over two years of agitation by the labour movement, culminating in eventual negotiation and signing into law of the bill, the Federal Government has continued to deploy various tactics, including divide and rule to negate the implementation of a basic surviving wage, notwithstanding that Nigerian workers have right to a living wage and not a mere minimum wage.”

The ASUSS National President insisted that, “no government in Nigeria had justification to reject the agreed, “peanut” of N30, 000 which only amounted to N1,000 daily, whereas artisans in the country earn more than N3,000 daily, while government expend more wastefully every day.

“They have no excuse under heaven as to their continued delay in the implementation. If it’s a question of insufficient fund, we have told them often that federal and state chief executives should cut their wasteful spending, including the needless foreign trips that gulp millions of naira. They need to be more creative, block all loopholes, be more patriotic, purposeful and fiscally disciplined.”