The Cross River chapter of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) says it does not understand the state government’s proposed contributory pension scheme.

Lawrence Achuta, NLC vice-chairman in Cross River, disclosed this to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Tuesday in Calabar.

During the celebration of his 100 days in office, Mr Achuta said Governor Bassey Otu said Cross River needed about N24 billion to clear the backlog of gratuities and pensions of retired civil servants.

“The governor said the state may not be able to meet the obligation, hence the need to introduce the contributory pension scheme in partnership with some financial institutions, which the workers rejected,” Mr Achuta explained.

Mr Achuta urged the government to engage the workers before introducing the scheme, saying there was a need to know the processes, conditions and benefits attached to it.

He said the workers needed to understand the scheme’s concept and the laws backing it.

“It is not that the workers totally rejected the scheme, but there are some issues that must be resolved and understood. It has not been done. It is the way the contributory pension is handled generally in Nigeria and that is why people are sceptical,” Mr Achuta stressed. 

He added, “Otherwise, there is nothing wrong with the idea. A situation where there is a deduction from your salary, but when you retire, your fund administrator cannot make funds available to you because the government was not making its own remittances is a source of concern.

“There is also what we call the right of accrual, those that have served for a certain number of years in the civil service before migrating to the contributory pension scheme.

“The years the workers have put in service are supposed to be calculated, and a government bond which will mature at their retirement issued to them. These were all spelled out in the Pension Reform Act.”

He maintained that the state should not just jump into a contributory pension scheme without taking all other components. Mr Achuta said the position of the NLC on the issue remained that workers needed to be fully oriented.

However, Erasmus Ekpang, Cross River’s information commissioner, said the state government had not abandoned the planned contributory pension scheme.

Mr Ekpang stated that the state was still working out modalities to implement the scheme effectively.

“The programme is still in the pipeline. These things don’t just happen. We are still working on areas to make the scheme workable,” he said.

(NAN)