The Joint Action Committee Comprising Retirees from Abia Newspapers, the Broadcasting Corporation of Abia, (B.C.A), Council for Arts and Culture and the Abia State Housing and Property Development Corporation has sent a Save Our Soul to the Governor of Abia State Dr. Alex Otti to pay them arrears of their pension.
In a statement jointly signed by the Chairman Comrade Chinkwe Ikenyi and the Secretary Chief Ikoro John Ikoro, the concerned senior citizens from the above named agencies and parastatals including the Umuahia Capital City Development Authority (UCDA) said they are left with no other choice than to send the message to the Governor owing to the protracted issue.
According to them , retirees in BCA are owed 12 months, Abia Newspapers 9 months, Abia Housing Corporation 9 months, Abia Arts Council 9 months and UCDA 9 months.
Part of the statement reads, “This ugly trend has imposed an unbearable hardship on pensioners of the parastatals in question. For instance, the BCA has since November 2023, when this Administration ceased to pay their pensions, lost 8 of their members to death due to lack of funds to support themselves in terms of feeding, medicals, etc.
The Abia Newspapers are not left out in this tragedy as they have lost 4 of their members.
The common reason given by the Government and its relevant agencies is that we have not been verified. But the truth is that there appears to be manipulations by Government functionaries to deliberately delay and abort all programmes designed to ensure the verification of pensioners of those parastatals as if verification is a rocket science”.
The pensioners further revealed that some of the parastatals had earlier been successfully verified by Mrs. Charity Ukonu which was not implemented while alleging that the Accountant General refused to honour the understanding her office and that of the Head of Service (H.O.S) made with them to the effect that after the Pensions Board Verification in September 2024, the affected Retirees will be start receiving their pensions.
It further revealed that the affected pensioners have also completed their on-line verification and submitted their verification certificates to the Pensions Board; which has in turn submitted same to the AG’s office but are yet to be paid as at today.
The affected retirees pointed out that with the current situation facing them, they are being compelled to see this as a deliberate attempt to delay the payment of their pension even in the midst of many of them facing life-threatening challenges of hunger, poor health induced by old age and the like and ultimately death.
They therefore called on the Governor to direct the immediate completion of the verification of those parastatals that have not been given codes in order to verify them, ensure immediate payment of all pension arrears of these parastatals since they were being paid regularly before this issue of verification came up .
According to them, receiving their pension arrears this month will enable them to offset debts, put their houses in order and pick up the pieces of their lives following the financial starvation and the dislocation of their plans since the past one year.
