SEVEN months after it began negotiations that ended with N70,000 as the new minimum wage, the Federal Government on Thursday began payment of the new salary and its consequential adjustments to public servants across all levels of the federal civil service.
This means over 1.2 million civil servants on the payroll of the Federal Government will be paid the newly approved minimum wage in September.
A warrant for this month’s salary signed by the Accountant-General of the Federation, Dr Oluwatoyin Madein, and addressed to the Budget Office of the Federation directed the commencement of the new payment.
This was as documents obtained by this newspaper from the National Income, Salaries and Wages Commission revealed the amount civil servants under the Consolidated Public Service Salary Structure would earn per cadre.
The amount was calculated per annum.
A breakdown showed that level one officers would now earn N930,000 per annum, level two N934,160. The salary figure increased to N937,713 for level three officers while grade level four officers now earn N950,243.
Grade Level five officers will earn N973,123, level six N1,041,786 per annum and level seven (N1,277,667).
Similarly, grade level eight public servants will now earn N1, 479,276, level nine officers will get N1, 641,226 per annum and level 10 will earn N1, 806,041.
For senior level officers, the document showed that Grade level 12 officers will now earn N2,007,152 per annum following the approval of the consequential adjustments.
While grade level 13 officials get N2,182,637, level 15 officials will get N2,358,936, and public servants on level 16 will receive N3,611,689 per annum.
Grade Level 17 officers, a position reserved for permanent secretary and the highest office in the civil service, will now earn N6,918,560.
One of our correspondents further observed that under every level, an amount was allocated for civil servants as salary, subject to change every year before their next promotion to the next level.
For instance, grade one level on step two public servant will earn N935,585, (N941,173) for step three, N946,859 for step four, N952,345 for step five, N957,931 for step six, N963,518 for step seven, N969,104 for step eight, N974,690 for step nine, N980,270 for step 10, N985,863 for step 11, N991,449 for step 12, N997,035 for step 13, N1,002,621 for step 14 and N1,008,209 for step 15.
Confirming this, the Director of Press, OAGF, Bawa Mokwa, in an interview said, “The new minimum wage payment will begin from today (Thursday) for this month.
“You can ask civil servants when they start getting alerts. You can confirm that. There is nothing on arrears payment yet. I don’t know anything about that. But payment is starting this month.”
A civil servant, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak on the matter, also confirmed the information, saying, “Yes, some people have started seeing it.”
According to the warrant, which contained a breakdown of all workers across various Ministries, Departments and Agencies, Armed Forces, Paramilitary, Federal Universities, Polytechnics, Colleges of Education, a total of 1,236,824 workers are included.
Recall that the Committee on Consequential Adjustments in Salaries for civil servants met on Friday as regards the new minimum wage template and agreed that the effective date for its implementation would be set at July 29, 2024.
In the breakdown attached, it was noted that the sum of N334,925,372,928.14 will be used to bear the cost for the over 1.2 million workers per month.
This means the government is expected to spend N4.019tn annually as its new wage bill.
Recall that the government had commenced additional revenue for the payment of the new minimum wage.
This development, which affected revenue distribution to states, was received with opposing views when an update on statutory allocation showed that the government transferred a sum of N200bn into the non-savings account at the August FAAC meeting, making a total of N595bn.