Lagos State Governor, Babatunde Fashola has urged the Federal Government to provide essential amenities like electricity so as to reduce workers’ expenditure on them.
He said this during the 2015 Workers Day Commemoration in Lagos on Friday, May 1.
“As a government, we must provide the basic infrastructure that will give a better life to workers. We must look at the things that take away the disposable incomes of the Nigerian workers,’’ he said.
According to him, workers are expending much of their salaries to enjoy some basic services that government is supposed to provide them.
“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 is a viable source of reducing unemployment in the country.
On civil servants’ salaries, 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.
