N93 per hour work
Between 7am and 12pm of any week day, at least 60 youths, both male and female, besiege the entrance of Solpia Nigeria Limited, a company that manufactures artificial hair on Iju Road, Agege, Lagos.
The young men and women appear to be relentless because they are there everyday and remain at the gate of the Chinese company for hours before dispersing in twos and threes late in the evening.
One of the young men, Ayotunde Akinyo, who has become a regular “customer” among those who visit the company every morning, explained the reason why he had been parading the place with the hope of getting employed in the last six months.
“Sometimes, the Chinese owners employ 50 people at a go out of the crowd of job seekers standing outside. Sometimes, they take just five. Before now, I used to come here irregularly, but it seemed that they usually employed on those days that I did not come. That is why I have been coming here regularly for the past six months,” he said.
Akinyo said he was 27 years old and had a Higher Diploma in Mechanical Engineering.
When he was asked by our correspondent whether he was aware of how much he could be paid if he was lucky to get employed, he said he knew.
The young polytechnic graduate said he knew that he would be paid N15,000, which translates to about N93 per hour for eight hours in five days a week. A worker had earlier hinted that the salary of a fresher in the company used to be N20,000 until it was recently slashed to N15,000.
“What other choice have I got? I did not just graduate and decided to come here. I had searched for jobs and was tired before I decided to come here,” Akinyo explained.
Akinyo found no reason to be ashamed as he was aware that there were many other graduates like him in the crowd.
