Over One thousand Pensioners under the auspices of All Federal Pensioners in Kano state Tuesday, staged a peaceful protest at the old campus of Bayero University Kano (BUK) over non-payment of 36-month, 33 per cent pension arrears which has led to the death of 300 pensioners within three years in the North west region of the country.
According to their spokesman, Malam Muhammad Isa who is the chairman, Federal University Pensioners Association (FUPA), BUK chapter, the pensioners include retired workers from BUK, Federal College of Education, Kano, Dala Orthopedic Hospital, Federal College of Education, Bichi, Katsina, Gusau, Panshin as well as Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital (AKTH) Kano.
The protesters passed a vote of no confidence on Pension Transitional Arrangement Directorate (PTAD), describing the activities of the body as fraudulent and unpatriotic.
According to their spokesman, “We have no confidence in PTAD, especially the executive secretary who has adopted a selective manner of payment in favour Customs, Immigrations, Police and Prison services as well as paying the university of Lagos teaching hospital pensioners 12 months arrears last August.
In an open letter addressed to President Muhammadu Buhari titled Mr. President Save our Soul, the federal pensioners lamented that, “we pensioners have served this country diligently, and we are aged and most of us are on medical drugs.
“We are no longer employed and we don’t have any regular means of income. We can no longer pay our children school fees, we can no longer provide for our families. We massively voted for President Buhari in 2015 and we appeal to him to use his good office to ensure the release of funds for the payment of our arrears.”
They added that, “Mr. President, we would like to express our lack of confidence on the executive secretary of PTAD and call on Mr. President to constitute a panel to investigate PTAD since its inception, what it took over, all other allocation made to it, its disbursement, the mode of the disbursement and also ascertain the claim of the executive secretary on the sources of the payments to those favoured sectors.
The entire pensioners, who have been struggling in the last nine years for PTAD to settle our 33 per cent pensions arrears want Mr. President to use his authority to prevail on PTAD to pay our outstanding 33 per cent pension arrears before the year runs out.”
Some of the placards they carried with inscription: “Mr. President pay us our 33 per cent pension arrears of 36 months, General Buharia Save our soul, Federal pensioners are dying, our children are out of school because we have no money to pay their school fees,” “Mr. President, pensioners are hungry; no proper feeding,”
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