Pensioners in Ekiti State has pleaded with the Governor to use the few months left for him to leave office to clear the over N40 billion pending gratuities and other benefits, from the outstanding debt to ameliorate their suffering.
Cumulatively, the retirees at present, are owed not less than N37billion gratuity arrears apart from monthly pensions.
Though they appreciated the government of Dr. Fayemi for increasing the amount budgeted for the payment of their benefits from N100 million to N400 million, they insisted that more needed to be done as promised during the electioneering campaign.
Rolling out the statistics of the state debts, they said “The following statistics is a summary of the state’s indebtedness as at December 2021: Pension Arrears; three months for state and seven months for local government. Gratuities: State pensioners were last paid in July 2013 with liabilities of about N18 billion, while local government pensioners have a liability of N19.8 billion and were last paid in September 2012. One has to imagine what the indebtedness will be now in July 2022.”
Responding on behalf of the Governor, Chief Press Secretary to the governor, Mr. Yinka Oyebode, said the government places premium on the welfare of not only workers but also pensioners.
He said since inception, the government had not owed a single month of pension while the payment of gratuity was increased from N100 million to N400 million. According to Oyebode, government would have loved to clear all the backlog of the gratuities owed by previous government but it cannot due to economic realities.