By LUCY OGALUE

The Chairman of the Tripartite Committee on National Minimum Wage, Alhaji Goni Aji, has urged members to be rational amid competing demands from workers on minimum wage.

Aji said this at the opening of the 4^th plenary meeting of the Tripartite Committee on the National Minimum Wage on Wednesday.

According to him, the committee has now reached the crucial stage of its assignment.

He urged them to approach the conclusive part of the assignment with some sense of honesty, patriotism, respect, and accommodation in the national interest.

“I crave the indulgence of each one of us and solicit a robust discussion to put forward an acceptable recommendation for a new National Minimum Wage.

“I urge the Committee to focus their minds on doing the right thing even when such a decision is difficult and goes against our personal position.

“We are all gathered here as leaders with massive and wide knowledge and experience on this matter and are representing the interests of our various constituencies in this assignment.

“But today, as far as all of us are concerned, we only have one constituency, which is Nigeria and national interest should be our guiding principle,” Aji said.

The chairman expressed optimism that the spirit of give and take earlier canvassed by President Bola Tinubu would overpower the Committee for the sake of our people and country.

“Therefore, we must muster the courage to take responsibility for our decisions based on available information, data, the state of the economy, our level of production, and the level of inflation.

“So that our recommendations for a new National Minimum Wage will be fair, realistic, affordable, and implementable.

“I urge members to speedily agree to a New Minimum Wage based on our knowledge, facts, figures, and data available so that the assignment will be concluded in the next few days,” Aji said. (NAN)

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