The Federal Government may incur additional N315bn in wage bill in the next six months for the newly introduced allowance for federal workers.
The Federal Government had on Sunday said that the provisional wage increase announced by President Bola Tinubu for all low-income workers for six months would cut across all treasury-paid workers.
The compromise was reached to avert the proposed indefinite nationwide strike declared by the organised labour.
The meeting came hours after the President in his Independence Day broadcast announced the approval of a N25,000 provisional wage increase for a certain category of federal workers for the next six months.
However, labour leaders rejected Tinubu’s N25,000 provisional wage increment for low-grade workers.
As a result, the Federal Government raised the wage award to N35,000.
This likely means that 1.5 million federal workers will benefit from the proposed N35,000 monthly palliative proposed by the Federal Government to cushion the effects of the removal of subsidy on the Premium Motor Spirit, popularly known as petrol, for a period of six months.
The Federal Government is expected to spend N52.5bn monthly on 1.5 million federal workers.
This means that a total of N315bn will be spent in six months, with each civil servant getting a total of N210,000.