Vice President Osinbajo Seeks Better Pay For Media Workers

-Osinbajo advocates better working conditions for journalists.

-He also encouraged employers to respect the national minimum wage and implement it in their payment structure.

Journalist deserve better salary and conducive working condition.

Vice President Yemi Osinbajo on Monday advocated better salary structures for media practitioners in the country.

He also noted that media practitioners and their employers should join the government’s contributory scheme.

He made the disclosure while declaring open the retreat of the State House Press Corps in Abuja with the theme “Journalists and Retirement Plans’’.

Osinbajo stated that the theme of the retreat was apt, especially for those in the informal sector due to uncertainties surrounding retirement.

According to him, remunerations of media practitioners are poor because some employers have the penchant to cheat the workers and also because the private sector does not recognise minimum wage.

He said there was the need to enforce some kind of adherence to minimum wage law by all employers rather than for civil servants alone.

Mr. Osinbajo also noted that media men were denied their salaries because the profession did not have entry point thus allowing non-professionals to overwhelm it.

“Anybody can basically enter into journalism,’’ he said and advised the professionals to combat quackery.

“Generally speaking, people are poorly paid; professional associations should be strong lobbies for good pay and their engagement should be more robust,’’ he said.

He also called on media practitioners to constantly develop themselves and seek better ways of delivering on their job roles in line with global best practices.

Citing some pay challenges confronting other professionals, he noted that there was great disparity between what people earn and what they spend adding that the disparity should be corrected immediately as well as the need for the private sector to respect the national minimum wage.

The Chairman of the occasion and Nassarawa State Governor, Tanko Al-Makura, represented by his commissioner for information and culture, Abdulhammed Kwarra, advised journalists to prepare for life after work.

He said that financial security in retirement did not just happen except for those who made deliberate efforts to save.

“You have to make saving for retirement a goal as well as device creative ways of being self-sustaining after retirement,’’ the governor advised.

The Guest Speaker and Chief Executive Officer of the Tony Elumelu Foundation, Tony Elumelu, said that retirement plan was not based on age as both the young and old could plan ahead and invest to take care of the period.

He advised the correspondents to conceptualise what they would like to do after journalism and then start developing it little by little until it would grow to huge enterprise.

He, however, stated that whatever one choses to invest in, one must have the passion for it.