Lagos sweepers: Supervisors lament poor pay

Some supervisors overseeing street sweepers working with the Lagos State Waste Management Authority have decried what they described as “poor wages and inadequate welfare support” from the agency.

The supervisors staged a protest at the state secretariat in Alausa, Ikeja, on Thursday, March 13, 2024, to express their frustration over LAWMA’s refusal to pay them the government-approved minimum wage of N85,000 since 2024.

During the mass demonstration, the aggrieved workers carried many banners listing their demands, which included, “Give us back our jobs,” “Pay us minimum wage,” “We want job security and career growth opportunities for graduate supervisors,” “No provision of PPE,” and “Change the tattered uniforms for sweepers,” among others.

They lamented that most of them were graduates but had been kept on a fixed salary of N40,000 since they were employed in 2018, and that the agency had denied them proper employment benefits and salary adjustments.

According to the workers, instead of adjusting their wages to meet the approved minimum wage, the agency increased their pay to N50,000 in February 2025 but subsequently disengaged them, asking them to reapply for their positions within seven days.

Speaking to Sunday PUNCH, one of the workers, who begged not to be named, said they were sacked on March 4, 2025, when LAWMA had yet to pay their February salary, which they only received after they had been asked to reapply for their positions.

The supervisor said the dismissal, non-payment of the approved minimum wage, and poor working conditions prompted their protest.

“We are protesting for several reasons, one of which is to get our jobs back. We have served LAWMA for seven years. In their statement, they claimed we were employed by the private contractors working with the agency, but that is not true. They were the ones who handed us over to the contractors. We just want our jobs back, along with the payment of the new minimum wage,” the supervisor stated.

However, in a statement shared on Thursday by the Senior Special Assistant to Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu on New Media, Jubril Gawat, LAWMA claimed that supervisors’ salaries had been increased to N50,000, while sweepers now earned N40,000.

The agency noted that the cleaning programme was managed by the government through private companies that engaged the sweepers under clearly defined contracts.

It stated that while private firms were responsible for paying the workers directly, the increased salary complied with the minimum wage as it was proportionate to the four-hour daily shifts of the sweeping programme.

But, one of the aggrieved protesters dismissed the wage increase claim as false, noting that the N10,000 palliative previously given by the state government, which LAWMA had stopped paying, was merely added to their salary.

“We were paid N40,000 monthly, but the state government used to give us a N10,000 palliative. At some point, we stopped getting the money. However, after sacking us and asking us to reapply, they paid the N10,000 palliative along with our February salary, totalling N50,000, which was just paid last week. But in their Thursday statement, they claimed that supervisors are being paid N50,000, while the sweepers get N40,000. That is a lie and pure fallacy,” the supervisor insisted.

“We work seven days a week. We used to spend about seven hours on the job. We resumed at 6:30 a.m. and closed at 1 p.m. daily. But now, they claim to have reduced the working hours to four, from 8 a.m. to 12 noon. You can see their logic and the way they try to play on people’s intelligence. But both the federal and state governments have said the new minimum wage applies to all workers. Yet, we have been denied the wages, despite having many graduates and even widows among us,” she added.

Another supervisor, who also requested anonymity so as not to jeopardise his reapplication process, decried the “pitiable working conditions” of the sweeping programme.

He said, “The only measure put in place was basic safety training on the job. There is no HMO for the sweepers or supervisors, and no access to public health facilities at all. Only a few sweepers have new uniforms, while 85 per cent still wear old ones, which is evident to anyone who sees them working on the road.

“If LAWMA truly takes the concerns of sweepers and supervisors seriously, why are salaries being delayed? They don’t pay until the second or third week of the next month, without any cogent reason.

“Before March 5, our resumption time was 6:30 a.m., and we closed at 1 p.m., with salaries of N30,000 for sweepers, and N40,000 for supervisors, working seven hours daily. Then, it was reviewed to 8 a.m. to 12 p.m. (four hours) just so they could claim they were paying the minimum wage of N40,000 for sweepers and N50,000 for supervisors.”

The sweepers’ agitation

Meanwhile, one of the state sweepers condemned the said salary increment in a viral video on Thursday, accusing some supervisors of exploitation despite the poor earnings and risks associated with the job.

In the video, which circulated widely on social media, the sweeper, who did not reveal her name, accused her supervisors of shortchanging workers and failing to implement the approved salary structure.

She alleged that despite reports that their salary had been increased to N85,000 since August 2024, sweepers continued to receive N30,000 for months without allowances or the necessary working tools.

The sweeper also raised concerns over salary delays, noting that their monthly wages often arrived by the 13th or 15th of the following month.

She said, “People should please help us and ask these people—I am not even sure they have blood running in their veins because we don’t understand why they are cheating us. We know that you are our bosses. You sit in your offices without pity for those of us working on the road. We buy our brooms without any allowance. We learnt that the salary became N85,000 in August, but our supervisors kept making empty promises despite the high cost of living.

“We buy up to three brooms at N1,000 each in a month, yet you have been paying us N30,000 for almost six months. We thought it would change last January, but it didn’t. Even the N30,000 is not paid on time, sometimes arriving as late as the 13th or 15th of the following month.

“Even the N20,000 wage award that the President ordered you to pay, we are only given N10,000. Sometimes, only 10 or four people receive it on each route.”

Beyond the financial struggles, the cleaner lamented the dangerous conditions under which street sweepers operate, revealing that at least three of her colleagues lost their lives last year.

“One person died from the shock of a trailer horn, while two others died after developing complications from inhaling dust. We want you to make an amendment,” she pleaded.

Efforts to obtain a reaction from LAWMA’s spokesperson, Kadiri Folashade, proved abortive.

When our correspondent called her at 2:56 p.m. on Saturday, she stated that she was on her way to an engagement and promised to call back.

In a follow-up call at 6:13 p.m., Folashade said she was at an event and again assured that she would respond. However, as of the time of filing this report, she had yet to revert as promised.

Mixed signals on minimum wage

Four months ago, Saturday PUNCH published a report that the sweepers and supervisors were not been paid the approved N85,000 minimum wage for workers.

In the two-part report published in November 2024, our correspondent had detailed how street sweepers, despite being part-time workers, were entitled to the new minimum wage payable to workers in Lagos State.

Saturday PUNCH reported that since the passage of the 2024 National Minimum Wage Amendment Act by the National Assembly in July 2024, debates had persisted over whether workers in the informal sector and those under contractual arrangements involving multiple parties, such as street cleaners, should be included in the new wage structure.

However, Senate President Godswill Akpabio clarified that all employees in the country, including domestic and casual workers, must be paid the new national minimum wage of N70,000.

The Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Labour and Employment, Kachollom Daju, was also quoted in the report as saying that it was a crime for any employer to pay less than N70,000 to any worker.

The Managing Director of LAWMA, Ibrahim Odumboni, claimed that the sweepers were not direct employees of the Lagos State government but were hired by private individuals contracted by the government for cleaning services.

However, the International Labour Organisation, in its Minimum Wage Policy Guide, stated that “minimum wages should also apply to workers in non-standard forms of employment, including workers on fixed-term contracts and other forms of temporary work, temporary agency work, and other contractual arrangements involving multiple parties, or part-time work.”

The ILO further stressed that countries like Nigeria should progressively extend minimum wage protections, both in law and practice, to workers in the informal economy through formalisation, as outlined in the Transition from the Informal to the Formal Economy Recommendation guide published in 2015.

A lawyer with Pavestones Legal in Ikoyi, Aderonke Alex-Adedipe, also explained that the scope of employees covered by the Nigerian Labour Act included both clerical workers and manual labourers.

She argued that the only employers exempt from complying with the Amendment Act were those whose workers were paid based on commission or piece rate, where wages depended on the quantity produced rather than the time worked.