Temporal reprieve may have come the way of pensioners, who are yet to be verified as the Pension Transitional Ar-rangement Directorate (PTAD) has extended the plan to remove 23,089 pensioners from the federal government’s payroll till the end of October, this year.
This is coming after a passionate appeal by the Nigeria Union of Pensioners (NUP) to give more time to pensioners who may not have been verified.
NUP general-secretary, Elder Actor Zal, made this known in a statement to journalists in Abuja.
it was reported that PTAD had in a letter written to the NUP in early August informed the union of the decision to remove names of pensioners in parastatals that did not undergo verification from the government pension payroll.
According to Elder Zal, “PTAD acceded to our request that they will not remove the names of pensioners until the end of October, by extending the time to about three months. PTAD took the decision owing to the agitation by NUP, hence it advised NUP to ensure that all pensioners know that the exercise has been extended by three months and whoever has not done verification has up till October ending to perfect his records; if not, they would remove their names”.
To this end, the NUP called on the pensioners at home and abroad to check their records and put it right with PTAD, using all the available channels provided.
Meanwhile, on the lingering issue of pension review as a result of the new minimum wage that came into existence last year April, the union stated that the Implementation Committee on pension review set up by the National Sala-ries, Incomes and Wages Commission (NSIWC) has already submitted its report to the board of the commission and the board had since approved it.
Meanwhile, the NUP general secretary called on the acting chairman of NSIWC, Ekpo Nta to expedite action on the review of pension in relation to the new national minimum wage agreed and signed into law by President Muham-madu Buhari in April last year.
Specifically, the NUP appealed to the commission to submit the already approved templates and consequential ad-justments by the board of the commission to President Buhari, adding that the delay in transmitting the report to the President since approved by the NSIWC board cannot be justified; and the pensioners were not happy with the de-lay”.
Elder Zal said, “It (the report) has been approved and submitted by the NSIWC board for onward transmission to Pres-ident Buhari. But the commission has not taken it to Mr. President for action. We don’t know what is delaying it but I can tell you that the pensioners are not happy with this delay. So, we want the Salaries and Wages commission to ex-pedite action on it and forward it to Mr. President for action immediately.”
The NUP also commended the federal government, especially the ministry of Finance for the recent release of money to pay the Nigerian Airways pensioners.
The general secretary said, “The ministry of Finance released money for the payment of Nigerian Airways pensioners; and we want to also thank the federal government for releasing funds for the payment of the Nigerian Airways pen-sioners.
