Governor Godwin Obaseki, yesterday, announced a new minimum wage of N40,000 for workers.

He also called on the Federal Government to declare an emergency on food security.

But pensioners who retired from the state service in 2012 protested the non-payment of their gratuities. The protesters who wore all black attires, bore placards and appealed to the governor to rescue them by paying their gratuities.

One of the pensioners, Irene Aiguobarueghian, said since their retirement, they were only getting their monthly pay, but not their gratuity.

But Obaseki explained that it was to avoid such cases of pensioners being owed that his administration keyed into the contributory pension scheme, saying his administration had paid all pension arrears.

“The purchasing power of an average worker continues to decrease. I want to appeal to the Federal Government to declare a state of emergency on food security, if this is not done, we cannot predict what will happen next. For optimum performance of our workers, we have resolved to do an upward review of the salary of workers of Edo State so the Edo State government has now resolved to increase the minimum wage of Edo State civil servant to N40,000 per month,” he said.