DAILY POST
When the Federal Government announced in September that it would start paying the proposed minimum wage of N70, 000, with a promise to pay civil servants the areas from July and August, not many Nigerians were excited about the news.
And the reasons were obvious, one of them being the recent hike in electricity bill.
A recent report quoting the FIJ calculation clearly indicated that average minimum wage earners spend at least 57.3 percent of their salaries on electricity bills if they use only seven appliances for a month.
The FIJ report noted that while the wage increase was a good development for workers, the cost of living has rendered the wage increase almost insignificant.
The report spotlights the cost of electricity alone and its impact on workers’ wages.
According to a National Income, Salaries and Wages Commission (NISWC) document, civil servants under the Consolidated Public Service Salary Structure would earn N930,000 per annum. This means that a minimum wage earner would go home with a salary of about N77, 500.
The Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) announced a 300 percent increase in electricity tariff for those in the B and A service category in April.
According to the Vice Chairman of the NERC, Musliu Oseni, the tariff hike meant that customers who formerly paid N66 per kilowatt per hour would now pay N225 for the same unit of electricity.
In the announcement, the NERC also said that only users in the band A service category, about 15 percent of the entire customer population, would be affected.
Surprisingly, a few months after the announcement, Nigerians were faced with flagrant and unsolicited transfer to Band A service category without prior notice.
Some people protested the move, while others took to social media to vent their anger and frustrations.
Decrying the move on his X handle, a financial expert, Joe Abah wrote: “I have confirmation that @aedcelectricity has now put me in Band A with no notice at all. So, N100,000 electricity top-up now lasts just seven days. I have been paying. Who has a gadget that can help me monitor whether I am getting a minimum of 20 hours of light a day, please?”
Other Nigerians who spoke to DAILY POST re-echoed their frustrations.
A small scale business owner, Chidi Adum equally lamented, saying, “How can you want to squeeze us to pay such (a) ridiculous tariff? And switch us to Band A without notice?”
According to Ayodele Dipo, a civil servant with the Lagos State Government, who lives around Amuwo Odofin area of the state, he was taken to Band A without notice and ever since that development, almost all his earnings have been consumed by electricity bills.
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