Nigeria Union of Pensioners (NUP), South West branch has on Thursday called for total exemption of provision of the BVN and NIN has part of the criteria for processing the wage award payment for their members.
Addressing journalists shortly after the south west meeting of the union at the Pensioners Building, Agbarigo Ibadan, the Public Relations Officer of the union for the Comrade Olusegun Abatan who was flanked by the national president of the union, Mazi Godwin Abumisi, the national general secretary, Elder Actor Zal, the chain of the union in the south west, Comrade Waheed Oloyede, among others called on President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to intervene and wage into the obnoxious instructions by the ministry of humanitarian affairs over the wage award issues as concerned all the pensioners across the country.
In his address, Comrade Olusegun Abatan who also doubles as the Oyo state secretary of the union said, “There is no doubt that the removal of the fuel subsidy in Nigeria have made some Nigerians vulnerable, on this issue, the Nigeria Labour Congress and the Trade Union Congress engaged government and they acceded to paying N35,000 to the workers and the N25,000 to the pensioners.”
“His Excellency President Bola Ahmed Tinubu wants some alleviation for pensioners by paying N25,000 wage award for the pensioners, the directive giving by the national social safety coordinating office, a department in the ministry of Humanitarian Affairs may make that award not visible, their demand from the pensioners may make the N25,000 wage awards not visible for the pensioners, this is because a circular is asking for the impossible, there is a circular requesting us to provide our BVN, NIN among other things before that money could be release for the pensioners.”
“To us in Nigeria Union of Pensioners we want to take an exemption to this directive and we want to state that the ministry of humanitarian affairs should be content with the supply of documents from the payroll of each state of the federation because these data’s are going to be supply by the state, so the ministry of the humanitarian affairs should adhere to the submission by each state, the payroll or the numbers of the pensioners and their account numbers and stop all these unnecessary demands.”
“The reason is that if they stick to this in the next one year or two pensioners will not take anything, because how do you gather pensioners to come and submit their BVN and NIN, pensioners are not poultry birds that you can easily find in a cages. Beside many of us are old and we don’t really have the strength again so we are begging President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to intervene and wage into this obnoxious instructions by the ministry of humanitarian affairs.” Abatan said.
In his address, the national president of the union Godwin Abumisi said the demand from the humanitarian affairs is even beyond him.
He said, “President Tinubu should help us look into this matter of NIN and BVN, the humanitarian affairs is demanding for our BVN and NIN before we can have our wage award, this is something that is even beyond me as the national President of the Pensioners, we are not in support of this development.”