THE National Youth Service Corp members have clamoured for an increase of their monthly allowance.
This was expressed in a social media campaign on Facebook and Twitter, tagged NYSC allowance.
This reaction came after Suleiman Kazaure, the Director-General of Corps on Monday addressed members against joining the proposed strike by the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), urging them to remain at their duty posts as loyal and patriotic citizens.
He added that there was no provision for strike action in the NYSC Act but services that would uphold the corporate entity of the nation.
The NLC has planned to begin an indefinite strike on Tuesday over the labour’s minimum wage.
The payment of N19,800 has been paid as the NYSC allowance since 2011.
Meanwhile, the director-general of the corps in August said the Federal Government has begun an upward review of the N19, 800 monthly allowances paid to members.
“The Federal Government is working to increase your monthly allowance. We received a letter from the Presidency through the Ministry of Youth and Sports and copied to the Ministry of Finance, which shows that the corps members’ allowance will be reviewed upward,” he said in August.
But in September, Kazaure said that the minimum wage would determine the allowance of the NYSC. “Whenever the minimum wage of civil servants is increased, an increment in corps members’ allowance will automatically be effected,” he added.
The current national minimum wage is N18,000, but the organised labour demanded that the amount be increased to nothing less than N30,000, taking into consideration the hyper-inflation that is currently being experienced in the country. But the federal government said it can only pay N24,000, while state governments proposed an even lower amount of N22,500.
The labour congress, rejecting the offers from both federal and state governments, has planned to commence a nation-wide strike action on Tuesday.
Similarly, a popular outcry of the youth corp members have dominated the social media on Monday
Paul Jesutofunmi, a Twitter user compared the allowance to almsgiving. “It’s so deeply annoying for a corp member to be paid N19,800. N660per day including transportation, accommodation is not just enough,” he tweeted.
Similarly, Habib Lateef tweeted that Nysc allowance could not feed for a month. He tweeted: “This is what they call ‘serving the nation.’”
Also, a tweet by Seun Shewen expressed how the Nigerian government intentionally made the Nigerian youths suffer for a year by paying a meagre allowance.
“ After going through daily stress in school, only to be paid N19,800 as allowance in this harsh economy. He added that the NYSC is a full meaning of ‘Now Your Suffering Continues,”he tweeted.