South West pensioners reject proposed removal of salaries, wages from exclusive list

The Nigeria Union of Pensioners (NUP), Southwest zone, has rejected the bill proposing the removal of workers’ salaries and wages from the exclusive list, saying workers will suffer untold hardship if the bill scales through.

The pensioners lamented that the bill if signed into law will empower state governors to intimidate, maltreat and punish workers.

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Raising from their bi-monthly meeting held in Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital, on Thursday, the pensioners said the removal of salaries and wages from the exclusive list will also worsen the already pathetic plights of pensioners across the country.

The meeting was attended by pensioners from Ogun, Oyo, Ekiti, Osun, Ondo and Lagos states.

Addressing journalists after the meeting, the Public Relations Officer of NUP, Southwest zone, Olusegun Abatan, condemned the bill, saying “It is quite insulting and out of common sense and logic that every point in time workers and pensioners are left to bear the brunt of mis-governance in Nigeria.”

Abatan wondered why the salaries and wages of workers should be removed from the exclusive list to the concurrent list while the salaries of the President, Vice President and other political appointees would remain on the exclusive list.

He said, “The Nigeria Union of Pensioners, Southwest zone, is in alignment with the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) on the demand that salaries and wages should not be removed from the exclusive list to the concurrent list.

“All pensioners in the federation are in support of this because we know that if this happens to workers, it will be worse for pensioners because at that level, the governors will do nothing than to start intimidating and punishing workers and they will start giving them whatever they want to give them.

“I wonder why the government wants to remove salaries and wages from the exclusive list and at the same time keep their own salaries in the exclusive list.

“The salaries of the President and the Vice President, Senators, House of Representative members and Commissioners are consolidated and on the exclusive list, so why are they not moving their own salaries from the exclusive list to the concurrent list? It is only the workers who are being given peanuts that you want to remove their salaries and wages from the exclusive list.”

He accused state governments of insensitivity to pensioners’ plights, saying the Federal and some state governments had refused to implement the 33.4 percent pension increment since 2010.