Retired teachers of local government areas in Delta State have again taken to the streets in Asaba, protesting non-payment of their pension and gratuity arreas for the past eight years.
The state government recently released the sum of N5 billion for the payment of pension arrears to retirees in the state.
The sum of N2.5 billion was for the payment of pension arrears for state pensioners while N2.5 billion was also released as grant to Local Government Pensions Bureau for the payment of local government and primary school retirees.
However, the elderly all clad in black attires, in the morning stormed Summit road by Government House gate in the state capital thereby disrupting free-flow of traffic on the road for hours.
Carrying placards with different inscriptions, some of the protesters displayed their medications on the tarred road to convince the state government that it had not been healthy with them.
They demanded proactive action by the authorities to end their plight which they said had claimed lives of many of them, just as they rebuffed government officials, including the Commissioner for finance, Chief Fidelis Tilije who wanted to address them.
One of protesters, Ismaila Isitua, said the protesting retired teachers were employed from 1985 by the state government before they were moved to local government areas.
Secretary of the Bureau of local government pension, Mr Frank Atube said the approved N2.5 billion had been disbursed, adding that while the sum of N1.6 billion was spent on the teachers, N800 million was expended on local government retirees.
He said government was not sleeping over the retirees as it is making efforts to settle the arrears.
Meanwhile, the state government has accused the Deputy Senate President, Senator Ovie Omo-Agege of sponsoring local government pensioners against Governor Ifeanyi Okowa.
The state’s Commissioner for Information, Mr Charles Aniagwu said despite the efforts of the state government in assisting the local government areas to defray their outstanding pension liabilities, Omo-Agege and the APC were bent on sponsoring protests on the matter to score cheap political points.
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Aniagwu said that some of the retirees appreciate the efforts of the state government in helping to clear the outstanding pension liabilities and remarked that a certain woman leader of the APC was being used to blackmail the governor and paint him in bad light.
“She is a retired local government staff who has continued to use her position in the APC to mobilise a few other persons to protest against the government on account of the issue of outstanding pension liabilities.
“This is somebody who worked for the local government and as a state government we have continued to assist our local government areas to meet up with a whole number of obligations in terms of paying salaries of their workers and at the same time assisting them in defraying liabilities owed their pensioners,” Aniagwu explained.
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