Regulate Prices, Not Minimum Wage, to Solve Economic Woes – NGO
A non-governmental organisation, Safe and Better Nigeria, has said that regulation of prices of goods and services and not minimum wage is the solution to the economic challenges confronting the nation.
The group in a statement signed by its National Coordinator, Solomon Charles Ikpaka, urged organised labour and the Federal Government to sit down and work out a concrete plan to regulate the prices of goods and services.
The statement, made available to South-South PUNCH on Monday in Yenagoa, noted that the daily increase in the prices of goods and services was causing untold hardship to the citizenry, thereby making the country inhabitable.
Ikpaka lamented that people were dying daily and crime was at its peak as the naira was too weak to afford much, both locally and internationally, and that Nigerians were willing to do the most unimaginable things, no matter the consequences, to survive.
He averred that if organised labour and the Federal Government agreed on a new minimum wage without tackling the soaring inflation, and in a few years from now, civil servants would begin another round of agitation for a new minimum wage due to the upsurge in the prices of commodities.
He said even garri, sugar, groundnut and sachet water that used to be the hope of the common man are now too expensive because of the inflation.
