By Yakubu Salisu, Kano
The Governor of Kano State, Alh. Abba Kabir Yusuf has again put a smile on the faces of pensioners and retirees from the state civil service by clearing their accumulated pensions with five billion naira (N5,000,000,000.00) on Saturday.
During the flag-off of the second phase of the exercise to clear-off inherited liability of unpaid pension gratuity and death benefits of over Forty-Three Billion Naira (N43,000,000,000) by the immediate past administration, Abba Kabir revealed that about 4,000 beneficiaries have been captured to be settled.
This, according to him is in addition to the distributed sum of Six Billion Naira (N6,000,000,000.00) in November last year to deserving pensioners and retirees who served the State diligently and retired due to age or years of service as provided by the civil service rules bringing the total sum cleared to eleven billion naira only (11,000,000,000.00).
The Governor noted that he inherited a pension system that was deliberately broken, chaotic, and confused as Pensioners were not being paid their entitlements, the few ones that were lucky to be paid had to surrender substantial percentage of their benefits before they get paid the balance of their benefits.
That the system was so corrupted that even the monthly payment was marred with irregular and illegal deductions that no one has any guarantee of how much was their monthly pension – because the deductions where arbitrary and unpredictable; this Abba Kabir Yusuf said he brought to a stop including illegal deductions from the emoluments of civil servants.
More so, the added that both pension and gratuity are rights and not privileges. “It is a debt on the shoulders of the State and since the State has benefited immensely from the services of these pensioners during their active and youthful years, it is the responsibility of the State to pay them whatever is due to them promptly, especially now that they are old and weak.
That is why our administration places high premium on the welfare and wellbeing of pensioners and retirees as well as families of deceased pensioners. Let me reiterate that, as part of our commitment to the welfare of pensioners, we always pay the monthly pensions to all pensioners on or before the 25th of each month. This we do without any arbitrary deductions, contrary to was being done during the previous administration”.
“We have so far settled 11 billion Naira pension entitlement during our first year in office and we will continue with the third phase in the next couple of months while we shall continue to offset the backlog of pensioners’ entitlements until we clear all the sum of over 43 billion Naira pensioners gratuities that the previous administration refused to pay. It is gratifying to express the commitments of our administration in promoting the welfare of the Pensioners in all ramifications so as to make the retirees and deceased pensioners’ families live comfortably”, he said.