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| Retirees protesting non payment of benefits at Government House gate, Asaba. |
Aggrieved members
of the Delta State Local Government/Primary School Teachers Contributory
Retirees today, Tuesday, September 8, 2020 hit the roads in Asaba to make good
their decision to do a peaceful protest to call attention of Governor Ifeanyi
Okowa and the public to their plights with a view to getting the governor to
show compassion and benevolence to them in their predicaments.
They are
aged, fragile men and women, who wore black outfits chanting songs and carrying
placards with various inscriptions to press home their demand for attention and
succour.
As they sang
the lyrics of their tunes read: “Okowa, pay our money o, Okowa’, while some of
the impressions on the various placards read: “Okowa, where is our gratuity,
pension?” “Okowa fear God.” Okowa, what will you gain if we die?” “Our pension
matta, No retreat, no surrender.” “Don’t make us refugees in our home land.”
“Yeye SMART Agenda, not for retirees”; “Governor Okowa stop campaigning in Edo,
just do what Edo State did to her retirees to Delta retirees.” “Okowa, enough
is enough, Pay us our money, it is our right,”
etc, etc.
Their first
point of call was the Delta State House of Assembly, where the gate was shut
against them, having sought to meet with the Speaker, Rt. Hon. Sheriff
Oborevwori and the House members. But, after a long wait, a handful of civil
servants, let by Mr. Ogheneraboke Ben, and who introduced himself as the
Assistant Director, Legislative matters spoke to the retirees from the other
side of the gate and received the letter addressed to the Speaker from them for
onward transmission to him. Ogheneraboke said: “We are civil servants, we are
just like you; we share in your pain.”
They then
proceeded to Government House, on Anwai Road,
traveling in no fewer than 15 chattered commercial vehicles from across
the three senatorial districts of Delta State, where they were stopped at the
gate by security operatives, but after another wait, government officials
including the political Adviser to the governor, Hon. Omimi Esquire, the Head
of Service, Mr. Reginald Bayoko, and the Nigeria Labour Congress Chairman,
Comrade Goodluck Ofobruku among others.
The retirees
in their letter to the Governor, signed by Mode Augustine, and Sir Henry Tukpe,
copies of which were made available to journalist, expressed dismay over the
ways and manner issues concerning their plights were being handled by the state
government. Pointing out that having served satisfactorily the 35 or 60 years
statutory age requirement for retirements, and having met their part of the
contribution of seven and half percent since inception of the Pension Scheme in
2011, they declared: “We have suffered enough hardship and humiliation since
our retirement. Based on the above and the perennial delay in payment of
gratuities and pensions to the local government staff and their primary school
counterparts, we wrote appeal letters to you our Governor dated 27/01/2020
which was replied on the 26/02/2020 and a subsequent reply from this body dated
17th June, 2020 and other subsequent meetings that have not yielded
any results, hence our decision to protest to you publicly of our plight and
ask you our governor to be compassionate and humane to our plights.”
The text of
the letter continued: “This action has become inevitable after all negotiations
with your agencies failed to yield results and we were not hearing any news of
remediation. Our members have suffered untold hardship, humiliation and we have
lost several of them to death due to ill health and disease, lack of care and
money to purchase basic medication. We have suffered enough Sir.
“Sir,
records from Bureau of Local Government Pensions show:
·
That
backlog of unpaid accrued rights (value of past services, which was determined
as at April, 2011) as at December, 2019 was N48,369,331,624.00 only; of which
N8,137,909,068 was for local government retirees and N40,231,422,556.00 was for
primary school retirees.
·
That
there is an unremitted deduction from staff contribution that accrued during
the zero allocation eras amounting to N5.9billion.
·
That
currently, a monthly allocation of N300,000,000 is released to the Bur
·
eau
and shared for the payments of the arrears between the local government
retirees and primary school retirees at N114,000,000 and N184,000,000
respectively.
·
That
as at today, local government retirees has been paid to the middle of 2016 and
their primary school counterparts to the middle of 2014.
·
That
currently, the numbers of local government/primary school retirees yet to be
paid their gratuities and pension are 5,697. Of these, local government has
1,348 and primary school has 4,349.
“The
question now is, how long will it take before these retirees will enjoy their
pensions with the current release of monthly N300,000,000? With a monthly
release of N300 million, which according to Bureau is shared thus:
·
Local
government N144 million monthly, making a total of N1,368,000,000 per year,
that means it will take about six years to offset the N8,137,909,068 backlog.
·
Primary
school retirees N184 million monthly, amounting to N2,208,000,000 a year and will take over 18
years to offset the N40,231,422,556 backlog.
“The above
statistics shows that government wants her local government/primary school
retirees to be without any means of livelihood for over 6-18 years after
retirement done after 35 years of active service or 60 years of age. What is
the average life span of Nigerians? – 54 years. For the state government to
expect her retired senior citizens who left after 35 years of service or at age 60 to wait for another six to 18
years before they can be paid their pension entitlements should not be allowed
and condoned by men of good will. These are men and women who even contributed
seven and half per cent of their monthly salaries to the scheme.
“We
therefore appeal to you to save the local government/primary school retirees
from untold hardship, pains and tears we are passing through while waiting
endlessly to collect our pensions. Most of us have no other means of livelihood
apart from the salaries that were stopped following our retirement; making the
situation unbearable as some are on medications, others living in rented
apartments, while many are struggling to pay children school fees, etc.”
In their
plea to the governor, the retirees appealed to the Governor to look into:
·
The
possibility of increasing the monthly allocation from N300million to N2
billion, until the backlog is offset.
·
The
need to provide some lump sums of payment, like N10 billion to the Burteau
apart from the monthly allocation of N2billion. This is done by other states in
the federation that are committed to the plight of their retirees.
·
The
need to compel the state leadership of ALGON and the Accountant General to pay
the sum of N5.9 billion unremitted deduction that accrued during the zero
allocation eras to the Bureau as it may go a long way in liquidating the
existing indebtedness of over N48 billion.
·
The
possibility of the state government intervening with Pencom to see to how our
retired members can access part of what they have contributed with their PFAs
by writing to the PFAs to authorize them to pay from our savings that is in
their custodies.
“Sir, it is
the desire of the retirees to smile and be removed from hardship and perpetual
sufferings, since the Delta State Pension Bill 2008 in Section 13 (8), 13 (9,
10) , 16 (5) and 16 (6) is clear on
this. We solicit the Governor’s understanding of our plea, as it will go a long
way to saving lives and cushion the untold sufferings we are going through
right now,” the retirees pleaded further.
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