RETIRED Police Officers of Nigeria on the contributory pension scheme have made passionate appeal to the National Assembly to ignore the agitations of the National Pensions Commission (PenCom) and the Pension Fund Operators Association of Nigeria (PenOp) and go ahead with the bill that seeks to amend the Pensions Reforms Act 2014 to exclude the Nigeria Police and other paramilitary organisations from the scheme and other related matters.
Speaking with newsmen in Jos, Plateau State, the group’s national secretary, ASP Sylvanus Basadeimbo (rtd) said the posture of PenCom to the bill depicted that it had no interest of retires, Dangote adding that the problems of police retirees was that they were often surcharged and paid very little.
“Our problem as retired policemen is that we are surcharged, we are paid meagre amount compared to those who retired before us. Pension is for life, but PenCom has a time limit for pensioners because at a certain level they stop payment insisting ones contribution is exhausted.
“Retirees are dying on daily basis from common diseases, they cannot pay their children’s school fees due to the meagre monthly pension they are paying us. We hope that the National Assembly will speed up the process in order to save many lives.”
Basadeimbo emphatically declared that unless the welfare of retirees was improved, the fight against corruption could not be won as police officers in the service would feel the need to acquire more wealth while in service so that they would not suffer the same fate with retirees.
“We want to join the old system. Pension is supposed to be reviewed after five years, but since 2007 that the system took effect, there has been no review and we are happy that the National Assembly is taking this bold step,” he said.
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