Members of the Nigeria Union of Pensioners (NUP), on Tuesday, called on the Federal Government to fulfill the N25,000 promise it made to them last year to cushion the effects of fuel subsidy removal.
The retirees also called on the President, Bola Tinubu to issue a directive to the National Salaries, Income and Wages Commission to release an enabling circular for the new “minimum pension” in line with the recently signed minimum wage law for workers.
Daily Trust reports that the government had last year pledged that it would pay N35,000 and N25,000 to federal workers and the retirees respectively as wage awards for 6 months, starting from October 2023, to serve as palliative.
However, checks by our correspondent showed that while the federal government paid the 6 months to their workers and some few states also paid, the retirees were yet to receive any.
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Speaking to Daily Trust at pensioners’ headquarters in Abuja on Tuesday, the spokesman of NUP, Bunmi Ogunkolade, explained that pensioners had made different appeals to the government through appropriate authorities but their pleas were yet to be attended to.
“We’ve written several letters to the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation. We’ve paid different courtesy visits to the ministry to no avail. We were told that our matter was hanging because of what happened in the ministry.
“We’ve also lodged our complaints to the National Assembly. We met with the Chairman, House Committee on Pension. We’re using this medium again to appeal to them to give us the wage award and resolve the issue of minimum pension,” Ogunkolade said.
The NUP spokesman, however, acknowledged that pensioners had received 20% pension increment meant for January to August 2024 in their various bank accounts, while thanking the federal government on behalf of NUP about the development.
He stated, “We are using this medium to appreciate the federal government led by President Bola Tinubu for fulfilling his promise to effect 20% increment on the monthly pension of our members. This is unprecedented.
“We hope that other two pending issues: palliative and ‘minimum pension’ as mentioned above would be attended to as well.”
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