The Senate on Tuesday urged President Muhammadu Buhari to order the immediate release of N174 billion voted in the 2016 budget for payment of pension arrears.
The upper chamber said that fund was a bailout created in the 2016 budget to redeem all federal government pension indebtedness amounting to over N174billion.
The lawmakers said that the provision for the bailout for pensioners was seen as a viable alternative to save the ugly plight of the country’s retirees.
The Senate noted that “if the Federal Government could release bailout funds to pay outstanding workers ‘salaries in the states, similar gesture should be used for the payment of pension arrears, which is its direct primary responsibility”.
The resolution followed the adoption of a motion entitled, “The untold hardship of pensioners occasioned by federal government’s failure to contribute its statutory share of five per cent to the Pension Redemption Fund” sponsored by Senator Emmanuel Paulker,
Senator Paulker, in his lead debate noted with concern “the untold hardship our retired senior citizens occasioned by the non-payment of their pension arrears since 2015”.
He said that pensioner under Contributory Pension Scheme, CPS who retired since 2015 have not been paid their pensions due to the failure of the federal government to contribute its statutory share of five per cent to the Pension Redemption Fund in line with the Pension Reform Act, 2004 amounting to a total sum of N285, 946, 669, 881.
The lawmaker also disclosed that “about N50billion was appropriated for in 2016 to upset part of the pension arrears, but only a paltry sum of N18billion was released”.
He further lamented that the pensioners under the Defined Benefit Scheme, DBS which include the Police Pensions, Nigeria Customs Service, Nigeria Immigration Service, Nigerian Prisons Service, Civil Service and other parastatals are yet to be paid their 33 per ecent accrued arrears amounting to N174billion.
“The delay in payment of pension arrears has put pensioners across the country in a very precarious situations where they wallow in penury, sickness, hopelessness and regret for serving their fatherland diligently only to be abandoned by the government upon retirement”, he said.
Paulker therefore warned that if urgent steps are not taken to pay the outstanding arrears within the current fiscal year, the much applauded Contributory Pension Scheme may collapse, leading to unimaginable consequences for the pensioners and the country in general.