NLC, NUP demand sacking of pension reform team

The Nigeria Labour Congress on Tuesday in Abuja called on the Federal Government to disband the Alhaji Abdulrasheed Maina-led Pension Reforms Task Team for allegedly neglecting pensioners in Nigeria.
The President of the NLC, Mr. Abdulwaheed Omar, said this during the World Pensioners’ Day.
He said the Head of Service, who is in charge of Federal Pensioners, should be allowed to handle pension matters.
National President of Nigeria Union of Pensioners, Mr. Ali Abatcha, called for the implementation of the report of the Senate Joint Committee, which indicted the PRTT officials for alleged criminal prosecution.
But the spokesperson for PRTT, Mr. Hassan Salihu, maintained that the leadership of the NUP was being sponsored “by the cabal and pension thieves to discredit the committee”.
According to him, about N189bn has so far been recovered from frauds in the Federal Pension scheme at the Office of the Head of Civil Service and the Police.
He reiterated the commitment of the PRTT to address all the challenges of Nigerian pensioners.
Salihu said, “Most of the pensioners, especially those from the NUP, are fake and they are being sponsored to discredit us. It is not true that we have abandoned them. There are over 120,000 pensioners and we have resolved to attend to everybody.
“For this reason, we can never be cowed by the unscrupulous enemies of our country. We shall be relentless in confronting these pension thieves frontally through arrest, prosecution and confiscation of their ill gotten wealth.
“No amount of threat, blackmail or distraction would deter us from restructuring all the pension offices in the country. Hence, the pension cabals should know that the team would only be encouraged by such threats.”
Omar, however, said, “If the task force, which was put in place to solve a problem, is not doing what it was put in place to do, then it should go. Despite claims by the PRTT that it carried out biometric exercise, there are still lots of pensioners who are yet to be captured on the exercise.
“This is the essence of the union and it is the responsibility of government to ensure that every pensioner is captured and also put in the payroll and paid when it is due. We have done a letter to Mr. President appealing that this issue be resolved, but unfortunately, we are yet to get an acknowledgement before we could talk of addressing the issue. But definitely, what everybody is after is result.
“That is, every pensioner must be paid without anybody being left out.
“So whether it is task force or whatever name you call it that claims to have done some work, the people on the ground are saying that the work is not well done because either some have not been paid or short-changed or some are not even captured in the biometric.
“One thing I must tell  Mr. President is that he should allow the bureaucratic structure to work and that is the only way out.”