[Asia Economy Honam Reporting Headquarters Reporter Park Jin-hyung] Oh Young-soon, a member of the Nam-gu Council in Gwangju Metropolitan City, proposed on the 30th that the level of public services should be improved through the enhancement of the living wage.
On the same day, Oh said in a five-minute speech at the 2nd plenary session of the 2nd regular meeting of the 290th assembly, “Nam-gu established the ‘Nam-gu Living Wage Ordinance’ in 2017 to set living wage standards so that workers employed within the district could enjoy a humane life, but the wages of public sector workers in Nam-gu are not only below the living wage but only slightly higher than the minimum wage.”
He also mentioned, “In the 2021 administrative audit, we requested that the living wage recipients be identified and a plan for applying the wage to those not yet covered be established, but workers affiliated with the Living Culture Center and the Nam-gu Youth Training Center were excluded from the living wage application plan not only this year but also in 2023, citing the reason that these are non-applicable projects.”
He added, “For example, team-level workers at the Living Culture Center often leave Nam-gu after gaining experience to move to places with better treatment, making it difficult to operate a stable and high-quality Living Culture Center, which in turn causes harm to residents.”
Oh said, “I hope that the ‘Nam-gu Living Wage Ordinance’ will be revised to conduct a comprehensive re-investigation of the living wage policy to ensure that no workers are marginalized, and that related budgets will be established. If such a uniform increase is difficult, I hope that the lives of workers who act as agents of Nam-gu’s public services will be stabilized and their actual quality of life guaranteed through methods such as providing treatment improvement allowances.”
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