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From Adanna Nnamani, Abuja
Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN) has asked for suspension of pension for all political office holders in the country until the economy improves.
It also described the recent clamour by the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC) to increase the salaries and allowances of top public office holders, as highly insensitive and an affront to the struggling masses and the working class.
It demanded that such idea be killed until they can justify the increment by first putting the economy in a proper shape and lifting millions of Nigerians out of poverty.
PENGASSAN President, Festus Osifo, stated this at the association’s National Executive Council (NEC) meeting in Abuja yesterday.
“Nigeria has suffered two recessions in five years under this present administration with the workers and the poor masses left to bear the brunt, and the economy remains in a bad shape on all fronts. The only group entitled to pay rise are the downtrodden workers and at best judges. The president, his deputy, governors, lawmakers and other political appointees do not require pay rise. The Economist of London already lists Nigeria’s lawmakers as the highest paid in the world. It is therefore provocative to consider increasing their pay packages without acceptable justification.
“We are also saddened by the continuous payment of pensions to ex-governors and their deputies even in states nearing insolvency. More painful is the fact that many states are not paying the N30,000 national monthly minimum wage, whose implementation commenced in 2019. Pensioners in some states have not been paid for 75 months or more with backlogs of unpaid salaries while others deduct workers’ pension contributions and fail to remit to the Pension Fund Administrator which by law is a criminal offence.
“Upon all these challenges of poverty and wants among the citizenry, former governors and their deputies in some states receive huge pensions for life, excluding cars and houses at regular intervals for an official that served for a maximum of eight years, this makes no sense. More so, some past state governors that draw such gargantuan pension from their poor states are current senators in the National Assembly who also earn salaries and gigantic allowances from federal pulse.” He said.
On the issue of fuel crises has rocked the nation for some time now, Osifo recommended that the various security agencies, especially men of Nigerian Customs and Immigration charged with manning the nation’s borders act professionally and in dictates to their oaths of allegiance to stop smuggling of the products across the West African countries.
Osifo, who is also the president of the Trade Union Congress (TUC), suggested that the various deports and other storage facilities especially those owned and operated by the NNPC should be upgraded and made accessible to all operators to lift the product.
