Greetings!
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One thing about work or labour is that there must be an enumeration which can be in the form of wages or salary, it all depends on the term being used by a country.
In the case of my own country, Nigeria, both wages and salary are being used when it comes to paying their workers their weekly or monthly entitlements.
Having said so much about salaries and wages, I would like to delve into the topic of the prompt which is all about, “Minimum wage.”
Here in my country, Nigeria, a country situated at the western part of Africa, our minimum wage which was just reviewed last year from thirty thousand naira to now seventy thousand naira was not in consonance with the economic reality of the country.
To officially start this write up, let me tell you here that the minimum wage which everyone who works for the government and some private establishments earn at the end of every month in my country is thirty thousand naira only.
Like, I said earlier when I started this my. Write up, the minimum wage of my country was reviewed just last year, 2025 and since then, the least worker who happened to be on the lowest grade level would at the end of the month go home with seventy thousand naira only.
Although, the amount when mentioned is a huge amount of money which should have been able to take care of the individual earners bills if it was in the past.
However, this is not the past when the prices of commodities such as foodstuffs, properties and bills were so low to be tackled with such a huge amount of money as it were back then.
Now, the economic situation of my country, Nigeria is not in any way smiling with the economic reality of the country as inflation has taken over the economic situation of the country.
As a salary earner, I have tried to plan myself on how to spend or share my salary, but all to no avail. All I could do is to use the money to settle the debt of the previous month.
The question is, What if the Nigeria Labour Congress which is the umbrella body of the Labour union didn't fight for the increase and the review of the past minimum wage.
It's their prompt action that led to the increase of the minimum wage last year. Had it been they didn't take the bold step, things would have been difficult and life would have been miserable for most of the salary earners and even the general public who would have also benefited from the pay.
However, the increase has brought a little bit of relief not to the workers or the work force alone but to the general public.
In conclusion, the minimum wage in my country is 70k and it has no correlation with the economic situation of the country.
This is my entry to week 211, episode 01 of the weekly Featured contest in the Hive Learners community.
Thanks for reading.
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