Retirees protest, lock out finance minister over unpaid entitlements

• Appeals to Buhari to order release of funds for payment

HUNDREDS of the federal public service retirees on Thursday locked out the Minister of Finance, Mrs Kemi Adeosun, and other officials of the ministry to protest the non-payment of their gratuities and other pension entitlements 13 months after retirement from service.

The protesters by the immediate past Director, Press, Federal Ministry of Education, Mr Olu Lepide, barricaded the main entrance gate into the Federal Ministry of Finance preventing staff and other workers in the ministry from gaining entry for several hours while the protest lasted.

They carried placards of various inscriptions, ‘FGN stop apartheid administration in Nigeria: pay the civil servants their retirement benefits. You have paid the army, police, all paramilitary; so pay us or we report you to God’, ‘Federal contributory pension retirees not paid since November 2015. We are suffering, many have died’, ‘Our gratuity is our right, why withholding it? Over one full year, no payment.’

It took the intervention of the police and some top officials of the Finance Ministry for the gate to be opened to workers after an audience was granted representatives of the retirees.

The retirees under the auspices of League of Federal Public Service Contributory Pension Retirees, called on President Muhammadu Buhari to intervene by ordering immediate release of funds for the payment of their gratuities and pension arrears before the end of the year.

Mr Chike Ogbeche, who addressed newsmen on behalf other retirees, explained that they had written to both the Ministers of Finance and Budget and National Planning on October 5, 2016 in addition to other efforts made to ensure that they were paid their entitlements in vain.

He said the contributory pension scheme was introduced in 2004, as a reform initiative to end the misery public service retirees as a result of delays in the payment of their pension benefits but wondered why government has refused to pay the retirees more than one year after retirement.

He noted that government gave the current economic crunch as reason for the inability to pay the retirees, saying this was not tenable.

He said: “We beg to say that that reason is not convincing. It appears that pension is being given a low priority as salaries of serving personnel are paid before the end of the month, at least in the federal public service.

“This low priority for pension is indeed unfair and ironical as the item was meant to be on first-line charge in government finance. This is more so as it is money meant to cater for people who have spent all their lives serving the public and are now mostly helpless due to age and other weaknesses,” he said.