DELTA State council of Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, has called on Delta State Government to urgently address the plight of pensioners by paying their outstanding benefits among others In a statement, Comrade Williams Akporeha, chairman, Delta state NLC, wrote that information available to the congress showed that many retirees have died of untold hardship. Nonetheless, he thanked the State Government for the recent payment of arrears on six per cent and 15 per cent pension increases.

According to the statement, “we however decry the following: The delay in the payment of the six months arrears (January–June 2001) based on the 142 per cent pension increase of 2000, approval of the supplementary list of retired de-stagnated primary school teachers which has been outstanding since 2008, release of N28,000,000 only for the payment of the balance of the de-stagnated primary school teachers since 2007. It will be recalled that only N5 million was released after some time and this was rejected by the union.”

On the Association of Contributory Retirees in Delta State, Akporeha said “the problems associated with the Contributory Pension Scheme in the state have necessitated the formation of the above named association which has forwarded myriad of its challenges to the state council of NLC.

For the avoidance of doubts, the challenges are government delay in the payment of retirees benefits for up to two or three years, wrong calculation of retirement benefits based on 2008 salary structure instead of 2010/2011 salary structure; (using the terminal salary point of the retiree), payment of 25% of lump sum instead of 50% which workers were told at the beginning of the scheme, default by government in payment of 50% of monthly wage bill of employees to open Retirement Benefits Bond Redemption Fund Account, RBBRF, with the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, as stated in the State Pension Reform law Section 16, Sub-section 1-6 which has accumulated to over N15 billion; failure by government to remit 10% into Retirement Saving Account of retirees and delay from Pension Fund Administrators (PFAs) up to three or six months before payment when government has released funds to them.”

“We call on the state government to set the necessary machinery in motion towards addressing the issue of contributory pension in the state. We want to state here that from available records to Congress, many retirees have died out of frustration occasioned by non-payment of benefits under the new pension scheme.This anomaly should be urgently corrected in the interest of retiring workers to make their rest after retirement a sweet one.” The state council of NLC shall be grateful to government if this issue is given the serious attention it deserves.”

Delta State NLC, equally called on the state government to in addition to the “laudable programmes of payment of bursary to undergraduates and scholarship for post graduate students, an introduction of payment of social security benefits to unemployed graduates and youths.