By Correspondent in Lokoja.
As pensioners on the payroll of the state government await their March payment with long faces and some of them suspecting “selective payment”, the state government has attributed the delay in commencing the exercise to network failure.
The Commissioner for Finance, Ashiwaju Ashiru,who disclosed this to Journalists in a telephone interview in Lokoja, however, assured ” that all pensioners will be paid soon.”
The Commissioner further traced the genesis of the delay, pointing out that,”the delay in payment of March pensions is due to logistics problems of transferring the money from Access Bank to UBA”.
Our Correspondent reports that the commissioner’s explanation notwithstanding, many pensioners urged quick solution to the delay, stressing that the development had forced them to go borrowing to feed and take care of other family responsibilities.
“The delay in pension payment is the least any pensioner can endure, as this class of people are no longer on salaries and other emoluments to keep body and soul together.
“Most of us have no other sources of income but our monthly pensions and we have family to take care for as well.
“I urge the state government to look into our plight and pay us our entitlements as and when due,” one of the pensioners who would not want his identity known,told The Reporters in an interview in Lokoja on Saturday.
Our Correspondent gathered that the delay in payment of March pension became a reality on April 6,2022 when a handful of pensioners, receiving their pensions from First Bank, UBA and Union Bank got alerts while many remained unpaid.
Edited by Dada Ahmed.
