By Joy Odigie
Benin – Gov. Godwin Obaseki of Edo on Monday said N100 million had been set aside monthly to settle arrears of pensioners.
He said his administration was making efforts to settle the backlog of pension arrears owed state government pensioners before December 2018.
The governor made the disclosure at the 16th Annual National Pensioners Day at the Nigeria Union of Journalists, Edo Chapter in Benin.
Obaseki said that his administration had been able to reduce the pension arrears from about N10 billion to about N3.9 billion.
He said that the arrears were accumulated between 1996 and 2000 and payments were being done in batches.
“In the case of state owed pensioners, we put in place N100 million on a monthly basis to address the balance of about N3.9 billion.
“We will increase this amount as the state revenue profile increases,” he said.
He said that the major challenge of the administration was the inability of the councils to pay pensions, a trend that had been gradually reversed.
“We didn’t want to have challenges in the payment of pensions hence we moved from the old system to the contributory pension scheme.
“You have a governor who understands the problems of pensioners and the only way to resolve this problem is for us to work together,’’ he said.
Commenting on the Paris Refunds, the governor said both the state and local governments got the fund and were used to pay council salaries and pension arrears.
Earlier, the State Chairman of NUJ, Mr Pullen Noruwa, commended the governor for attending the event and setting up an eight-man committee to address pension matters in the state.
Noruwa, however, appealed to the governor to increase the N100 million set aside for monthly payment of pension arrears to about N1 billion so that the desired effect would be felt. (NAN)