Kano State Governor Abdullahi Ganduje has suspended the payment of N30,000 minimum wage to the state workers, reverting to N18,000.
The state government had in December 2019 agreed to pay workers N30,000 as minimum page after President Muhammadu Buhari in April 2019 signed the new minimum wage act into law.
However, Ganduje’s spokesman Salihu Tanko-Yakasai told TheCable on Wednesday that the state had reverted to N18,000 minimum wage due to the recession caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The state government has reverted to the initial minimum pay due to the recession. What we are getting now as a government has reduced, and we can’t afford to pay the N30,000 minimum wage,” he said.
The online news medium reported that sources in the state civil service said they were not given prior information of the development.
“We saw the deduction in our November and then December pay, and nobody told us anything,” a source was quoted saying.
“The pensioners also had deduction in their pay and no reason has been given for this.”