Nationnewslead reports that Nigerian Union of Pensioners, Nasarawa State Council, has accused chairmen of the 13 Local Government Areas in the state depriving them of their statutory pension.
This is even as the retirees are set to shut down activities at the local councils across the state from the 1st of January, 2021 if their demands were not met
The union threatened to call out its members to occupy the 13 LGA secretariats to know the reasons for the non-payment of their monthly pension.This we shall diligentlydo until our demands are met before the New Year,” the union said in the statement.
The allegation is coming even as the LGA chairmen said they have commenced the forensic verification of pensioners in the state.
The union, in a statement signed by the chairman, Musa Obakpa, claimed that local government councils in the state had never considered the payment of pension to their retirees as an important matter .
Meanwhile, Chairman, Association of Local Governments of Nigeria (ALGON), Aminu Maifata, had claimed in Lafia that the verification had become necessary to address some anomalies in the pension administration
According to the ALGON Chairman, “As at June 2019, when the LGAs got financial autonomy, we met an outrageous pension bill, and so we decided to take a closer look.We then discovered that a staff, who before retirement was earning N10,000, is now collecting N25,000 as pensioners
The ALGON chairman said that some of the pensioners who retired with the old salary structure, were surprisingly receiving pensions based on the new salary structure.
Reacting to the allegations by the local government pensioners that the chairmen did not care about paying their pension, Mr. Maifata described the allegation as untrue.
He explained that the local government administration law in the state stipulates that 15 percent of the Statutory Revenue Allocation (SRA), to each LGA, be deducted and transferred to the state’s Pension Bureau, which is saddled with the responsibility of paying pension.
He said that no LGA in the state had reneged on payment of the 15 percent of its Statutory Revenue Allocation as contained in the law stating that when the bureau complained that the 15 percent was no longer enough to pay pension, the governor intervened by convening a stakeholders’ meeting to addressing the situation.
Mr. Maifata said that Gov. Abdullahi Sule, had however, promised to send a bill to the state assembly for the upward review of the percentage.
He said that the pensioners had during the meeting suggested that the 15 percent of the SRA for two months be combined to pay for one month pension, which the chairmen obliged adding that Governor Sule had urged them to fashion out ways to augment their pension considering that any percentage of the SRA would not be sufficient with the current economic realities.
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