Thursday, March 28, 2024

Lost Years: Osun retirees yet to be paid backlogs from active service – Ekiti pensioners to forfeit 15% gratuity

In Osun and Ekiti States, retirees are scrambling to get slices of benefits from their years of service or risk a long, near hopeless wait.

• January 14, 2021
Gboyega Oyetola and Kayode Fayemi
Gboyega Oyetola and Kayode Fayemi

One big incentive for many, who commit their active years to civil service is the promise of social security via pensions and other post-service benefits. The tides are however changing, workers are being encouraged to get-it-all-now, seeing the deplorable plights of labourers of yore.

In Osun and Ekiti States, retirees are scrambling to get slices of benefits from their years of service or risk a long, near hopeless wait.

Osun workers hoping for halves

Demands for payment of pensions and gratuities have been shelved by Osun retirees, who have narrowed down their requests to the remittance of backlogs of salaries owed them while in active service.

Years after retirement, dozens of primary and secondary school retired teachers are still being owed as much as 29 months half salary arrears.

Citing torrid economic realities, the administration of former governor Rauf Aregbesola had between 2015 and 2018 introduced a modulated salary structure for categories of state workers, to compensate for the unpopular alternative of retrenchment.

Civil servants on grade level 13 and above were compelled to receive 50 percent of their salaries, while those on levels 8-12 received 75 percent of their wages.

A former official of the Association of Primary School Head Teachers in Ejigbo Local Government Area, E. O. Alawode, told Peoples Gazette Wednesday that the group of retirees had only managed to arm-twist the incumbent Governor Gboyega Oyetola into paying just one out of 29 months outstanding half salaries.

“We are owed 29 months arrears of half salary,” Mr. Alawode told the Gazette. “We protested around December last year, which compelled the state government to pay one month out of the 29 months of half salaries owed us.”

Mr. Alawode expressed dismay at the sectionalised payment of the retired workers, which excluded a large number of expectant retirees from the December disbursement.

“Not everyone was paid. Only the 2016 cadre and a few retirees who left service in 2017 received payment. Those who retired in 2018 and 2019 were not considered,” he said.

Coordinator of the association’s 2017 cadre, Sobulade Alabi, disclosed that retirees under her category were being owed 21 months of half salaries.

She lamented that just like other local governments in Osun, “only ten out of 33 2017 retirees in Ejigbo were paid one month out of 21 months of half salary in December.”

Mrs. Alabi told the Gazette that payment of pension and gratuity by the state government was still an illusion.

“Many years after retirement, we haven’t been paid our gratuities under the contributory pension scheme,” she added.

Ekiti pensioners forfeit 15 percent gratuity

Pensioners in urgent need of their full gratuities will forfeit 15 percent of the entire sum, the Ekiti State government had told retirees last year.

Akin Oyebode, the state commissioner for finance and economic development, explained that the government had partnered a Lagos-based private investor, United Capital Plc, to pay discounted gratuity arrears to pensioners, as the state’s earnings had thinned out in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

The partnership, he noted, would fast track payment of backlogs through a negotiated discount process.

“Under this arrangement, what we intend to do is to bring an investor to pay the money to an individual once with 15 percent deduction, but those who want to stick with monthly payment won’t suffer any deduction, they will be collecting it in tranches until it is paid. It is voluntary,” Mr. Oyebode had said in a statement.

The official stated that pensioners could negotiate lower percentage discounts if they opted for a one or two-year spread in payment.

“The 15 percent is for those who want the money paid at once and it is not compulsory,” he said, while refuting reports that the approved discount rate had been reviewed upwards to 25 percent.

Pensioners react

The outgoing chairman of Nigeria Union of Pensioners (NUP) in Ekiti, Ayo Kumapayi, told the Gazette Wednesday afternoon that the majority of retirees in the state had resolved to accept the proposed Discount Gratuity Settlement Scheme.

“We made a survey both online and manually and discovered that 95 percent of affected pensioners have agreed to the discount arrangement,” Mr. Kumapayi who is due to leave office next Tuesday said.

The incoming NUP state chairman, Mr. Akinola, however, argued that no agreement had been reached between pensioners and the Fayemi administration.

Governor Fayemi of the ruling APC has been widely criticised for championing the Discount Gratuity Settlement Scheme, which has been described as a rip-off by the opposition PDP.

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