Pensioners Call on Abia Govt to Implement Committee’s Report on Retirement Benefits

Pensioners, under the aegis of the Abia Pensioners’ Forum, have enjoined Gov. Alex Otti to fast-track the implementation of a committee’s report regarding pension arrears and gratuities.

The forum’s Coordinator, Mr Okey Kanu, who made the call while briefing journalists in Umuahia on Wednesday, wondered the state government’s delay in implementation several months after the report was submitted.

Recall that the forum, a pressure group under the state council of the Nigeria Union of Pensioners’, has been pushing for the resolution of pension-related issues in Abia.

According to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), the group had raised several concerns and had asked the governor to revisit the purported waiver or forfeiture of arrears of pension and gratuity.

However, Kanu, who was flanked by other members of the executive, said that the governor had in March promised to revisit and had set up a committee to that effect.

He expressed worry over the continued delay in the implementation of the committee’s report, adding that it had continued to cause unnecessary anguish to pensioners’ in the state.

Kanu said: “Why must pensioners be subjected to this type of treatment and neglect after 35 years of service or 60 years of age in the service of Abia? Will it surprise anyone here to know that as at today, pensioners in the state receive as little as N2,000 or less as monthly person?

“The gratuity of such persons is not up to N50,000 after 35 years of service or 60 years of age. Yet, these persons, after being owed for more than 20 years, were among the pensioners whose arrears of pension and gratuity were said to have been waived or forfeited.”

Kanu warned that pensioners would not accept being shortchanged under any guise, neither would they accept any percentage payment as “total payment of what we are owed as was done before.”

The coordinator lauded Otti’s administration for the massive infrastructural development in the state, pointing out that the group was not an opposition to government and could not be used as such.