Our correspondent
Southeast zone pensioners on Wednesday demanded the withholding of Federal Allocation to Anambra State and other governors from the zone who have not cleared their arrears of gratuities to the pensioners in the zone.
They urged the Federal Government to use its enforcement mechanism to compel the governors of the zone to with immediate effect, clear all the outstanding arrears due to the workers
Our correspondent gathered that Anambra State is owing its retirees of four years gratuities from 2018.
The state governor, Prof Chukwuma Soludo had assured to clear the arrears which were inherited from his predecessor, Willie Obiano, before long.
But a delegation of pensioners from the five South-East states who made the demand in a communiqué they issued at the end of their one-day delegate conference demanded that any governor who failed to comply should be removed from office or probably be suspended from office indefinitely.
They stated this in a four-point communiqué entitled: “Wants of crass materialism, conspiracy, connivance, silent killing of innocent and stealing of pensioners’ funds: a case study of South East Governors, is the bane militating payment of pensions and gratuities”.
A copy was made available to newsmen in Onitsha, Anambra state, Wednesday, by the State chairman of Nigerian Union of Pensioners, NUP, comrade Anthony Ugozor.
The delegate said it would equally consider mounting pressure on the Federal Government, as a reminder for non compliance by state governors to the existing constitutional provisions.
” Let the Federal Government use both the exclusive and concurrent legislative powers they have to prescribe sanctions to the erring state Governors who flout constitutional provisions as enacted by the Federal Government.
” On the other hand, let us mount pressure to our NUP National headquarters, to reiterate non payment of pensioners’ gratuities and other benefits due to pensioners so that we may attract prompt action from them. ”
They said it was quite worrisome that in most cases, state Governors would address ambiguous letters telling the pensioners to wait till when the economy would improve but according to them, “we do not know when the economy would improve or when they would agree that the economy has actually improved.”
