The Association of Retired Federal Senior Public Officers of Nigeria has urged the Pension Transitional Arrangement Directorate to reinstate the use of the Salaries and Wages Commission’s legally approved monthly benefit payment structure in the distribution of its members’ monthly pension payments.
According to The Punch, ARFESPON requested PTAD in a statement to abandon its self-designed payment scheme, which underpays pensioners every month.
ARFESPON encouraged PTAD to ensure the application of Section 173 of the Nigerian constitution, which pushed for automatic increases in pension benefits if salaries and allowances for serving government employees increased.
It stated that PTAD failed to enforce a provision in the Nigerian constitution requiring an increase in pension benefits every five years if salaries for serving government employees did not grow.
It also noted that the issue of harmonization of pensioner benefits, which its members had been begging PTAD to implement, had been swept under the carpet, lamenting that some of the group’s members making these cases had joined their ancestors during this agitation, while PTAD had maintained its resisting stance.
The Chairman of ARFESPON Lagos Chapter, Mr Olufemi Odewabi, made this call at the group’s meeting in Lagos, urging the Executive Secretary of PTAD, Dr Chioma Ejikeme, to use her second term as PTAD executive secretary to correct some mistakes and maltreatments meted out to pensioners during her first tenure in office.
