No fewer than 13 Permanent Secretaries and 2,888 other categories of civil servants are yet to be paid their retirement benefits by the Zamfara Government, the state’s Pensions Commission has disclosed.
Secretary of the State/Local Governments Contributory Pensions Commission, Alhaji Mansur Mustapha, who made this known to journalists in Gusau, on Monday, added that the previous administration had stopped paying gratuities, until the present administration came and began releasing N100 million monthly to settle the backlog.
“To show you the extent of the problem, if the statutory N100 million is released to the commission this January, the money will be used in settling the retirement benefits of those civil servants who retired in February, 2016,” Mustapha said.
He noted that if not for the high number of retired permanent secretaries, whose benefits consumed a lot, the N100 million could settle about 50 retired civil servants.
Mustapha further explained that retirement benefits of a single permanent secretary costs almost N14 million, such that whenever they were included on the payment list, they consumed a substantial part of the money.
He said in spite of the improvement made by the present administration to settle the backlog of pension arrears, there was a burden of over N4 million gratuities yet to be settled by the government.
On the delays experienced in the payment of monthly pensions, Mustapha said the delay was not deliberate and that since the commission took over the payment of the monthly pensions, it had been prompt in paying the pensions once the funds were released. (NAN)
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