Abia Pensioners Begs Governor Otti For Outstanding 48-Month Arrears, Reminds Him Of Their 12 Dead Colleagues Due To Hardship.
The Aggrieved Abia pensioners from various State Parastatals have requested to Governor Alex Otti to pay their Outstanding 48-month retirement pension arrears.
The pensioners, who are members of the Joint Action Committee (JAC), notified that 12 of their colleagues have died due to poverty and hardship.
In a letter to Governor Otti, the pensioners stated that they are being owed 48 months of pension arrears.
They reminded the governor of his promise to improve their welfare and the strategic role they played in his emergence as governor in 2023.
The affected parastatals include the Broadcasting Corporation of Abia (BCA), Abia Newspapers, Abia State Housing and Property Development Corporation, the Arts Council, and the Umuahia Capital Development Authority (UCDA).
In the letter obtained on Friday, which is jointly signed by Comrade Chinkwe Ikenyi and Chief Ikoro John Ikoro, the group chairman and secretary respectively, the pensioners urged Governor Otti to address their plight and pay their outstanding pension arrears.
The elder statesmen listed the owed pension arrears as: “BCA Umuahia -12 months, Abia Newspapers-9 months, The Housing Corporation-9 months, Arts Council-9 months and UCDA-9 months.”
They stated that the non-payment of their pensions has imposed an unbearable hardship on their members in question, adding “for instance, the BCA has since November 2023, when this administration ceased to pay their pensions, lost eight of their members to death due to lack of funds to support themselves in terms of feeding, medicals, among others.
“The Abia Newspapers is not left out in this tragedy as they have lost four of their members.
“The trend is common to the rest of the parastatals as they have lost various number of their members since the abrupt stoppage of their pensions,” the pensioners lamented.
They told the governor that the common reason given by government relevant agencies is that they 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”.
They recalled that Governor Otti had during his previous media conferences told the people that the government had money to pay the pensioners and that their money was in the bank.
“He also said that what was needed was only to verify the pensioners in question.
“We need to stress here that some of the parastatals had earlier been successfully verified by Mrs. Charity Ukonu, as directed by the Government. And when it was time for payment of these parastatals, the same Government that commissioned her scuttled the verification for no just cause and has continued to hold the monies of these parastatals, thereby deepening the woes of the helpless parastatals by denying them their legitimate pension entitlement.
“Also, worth noting is the Accountant General’s refusal severally to honour the agreement she and the Head of Service (H.O.S) made with pensioners to the effect that after the Pensions Board Verification in September 2024, that the pensioners would be paid at least one month to cushion the hardship being faced by the pensioners, while the arrears would be paid in the subsequent month of October, 2024.
“And as if to perfect the plot to continue to hold these pensioners to ransom, the Accountant General thrice returned the Authorization Letters of these pensioners sent to her by the Pensions Board when it was almost time to pay these pensioners.
“This time she claimed that unless the pensioners were fully verified that she would not pay them.
“We must, however, note that she managed to pay only 4 pensioners from Abia Newspapers, BCA-nil, Arts Council-2, U.C.D.A-4, and the Housing Corporation-30. And this was followed by another publication by the Government for parastatals to go for another verification with some of the parastatals not given code for the verification.
“All these parastatals that have completed their on-line verification and submitted their verification certificates to the Pensions Board which has in turn submitted them to the AG’s office are yet to be paid till this moment.
“Against the background of what we think is a ding dung of disappointments designed to continue to delay the payment of pensioners, 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, we passionately make the following prayers to Your Excellency in order to continue to survive in God’s Own State and a New Abia.
“To facilitate the immediate completion of the verification of those parastatals that have not been given codes in order to verify them.
“To ensure immediate payment of all pension arrears of these parastatals, after all, we were being paid regularly before this issue of verification came up.
“We look forward to receiving our pension arrears this month to enable us settle out debts, put our houses in order and pick up the pieces of our lives following the financial starvation and the dislocation of our plans for one year that we have been owed by Government.
“We should humbly remind Your Excellency that pensioners from parastatals and other pensioners, played a strategic role to ensure the emergence of this Administration and still look forward to the full implementation of your promises to better the lot of pensioners who are rightly and would ever be your staunch partners in progress in Abia State.”
