Minimum wage now is the best, says Liato
Minimum wage now is the best, says LiatoBy Moses Kuwema
Fri 11 Feb. 2011, 04:01 CAT
THE current minimum wage at K419,000 is the best because many people are happy with it, says labour minister Austin Liato.
In an interview, Liato claimed that many people were happy with the minimum wage, adding that it was a product of consensus between employees, employers and the government.
"We consulted widely so it’s not an issue that was implemented unilaterally; it’s a product of consensus. In arriving at the minimum wage we took a lot of things into account, the interest of both workers and employers," Liato said.
He said the government wanted to ensure that even small companies continued to survive in order to protect jobs.
"We have to tread carefully that whilst we want employees to earn something meaningful, we also do not overprice them out of jobs, so the minimum wage as it is now is the best," he said.
And Liato has advised workers at Evelyn Hone College that have staged a sit-in to dialogue with their employers.
Liato said there was no reason for the workers to go on strike before they could exhaust all the channels of resolving their problems, which include going to his ministry if they reached a stalemate with their employers.
"Workers’ conditions of service remain an on-going process. There will be no time in any working environment where you will say now we have reached the end of conditions of service improvement, we won't do it anymore. So everyone must understand that the normal way of improving these conditions of service is not through illegal means like sit-in protest," he said.
Liato also advised employers against being rigid in dealing with issues of their employees' conditions of service.
Labels: AUSTIN LIATO, MINIMUM WAGE
posted by MrK @ 2:18 PM
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