By Correspondent in Minna.
The Nigerian Union of Pensioners, (NUP) Niger state chapter, has made a passionate appeal to the Governor Abubarkar Sani Bello-led administration to look into the plight of its members and ensure settlement of all their gratuities before handing over next year.
The State Secretary of the chapter, Comrade Abdullahi Baba Sani in an interview, said time has come for the Governor Sani Bello led administration to settle all outstanding gratuities for retirees, especially now that the administration has few months before its exit.
Comrade Sani expressed regret that ‘retirees are dying and some been evicted from their rented apartments due to inability to settle rent arrears’.
He said that payment of gratuities in percentage is unacceptable, adding that pensioners are entitled to their 100 per cent entitlements in full whenever funds are available to the Pension Board, “instead of this 30 percent thing”.
He suggested to the state government to direct local government council audit department to do pay retirees 100 per cent of their gratuity and ensure that names of pensioners who died do not appear on the payroll again ton reduce wastages.
Comrade Sani regretted that the N40 billion gratuity and other pension liabilities were marred by irregularities, including infiltrations of ghost pensioners, there by robbing genuine retired civil servants of their benefits running into several millions of Naira.
The NUP wants Governor Bello to ensure that all arrears and gratuities incurred by his administration are cleared to enable incoming administration execute electioneering campaign promises and not being burdened with settlement of outstanding gratuities to retirees.
He said: “Mr. Governor came up with a 16-member committee which came up with recommendations that include that the state government should set aside 20 per cent gross monthly Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) to cater for payment of gratuities and all pension related matters which could be reviewed upward or downward”.
“Unfortunately, some individuals refused! to allow for the implementation of the specific recommendations, hence the present predicament the NUP found itself for having accumulation of gratuities within the range of 30-40 billion unpaid to state retirees.
Comrade Baba Sani, nonetheless,pleaded with state and local government retirees to be patience and show high level of understanding, adding that the leadership of the union in the state had been doing everything humanly and legally possible to see that all their entitlements are paid.
Edited by Dada Ahmed.
