ARFESPON Demands Payment of Pensioners’ Benefits

The Association of Retired Senior Public Officers of Nigeria (ARFESPON), has appealed to the federal government, to abate the pensioners out of their current unpleasant situation by ensuring immediate payment of outstanding 18 months of the 33 percent increase in their benefits effected by the Good Luck Jonatan’s administration.

The body is also demanding immediate payment of the illegally deducted 20.4 percent of pensioners’ increment from July 2010 till date, as well as the placement of the computation of the pension on the corresponding payable salaries of the serving workers to avoid further disparity.

ARFESPON Chairman, Olufemi Odewabi, who made the call in a statement issued at the end of the association’s meeting in Lagos recently, said against the back drop of the above situation, many pensioners die daily due to their financial incapability to maintain the acquisition of their medication and others.

Asserting that the spirit of their members who departed without seeing the fulfillment of the above outstanding payment they supposed to receive from government will not be happy even in the grave, Odewaby stated: “It can be envisaged that the spirit of the departed souls of this vendetta will always be after those that deliberately denied them of their rights and entitlements whilst alive”.

The ARFESPON Chairman, in a letter titled; ‘Plight of the Nigerian Federal Civil Service Pensioners’, unanimously written by the members recalled various inhuman treatment and comments pensioners had received from government officials on account of demands for their rights.

“It was once mentioned by a top government functionary during the administration of Good Luck Jonathan when he was approached for the payment of the entitlement of the pensioners that the government has more than enough at hand rather than the issue of “Unproductive Pensioners.”