The Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, in Kwara State, has criticised the State government over the payment of gratuity to pensioners in the State based on political parties’ affiliation.
The Party’s State Publicity Secretary, Tunde Ashaolu, in a statement on Wednesday in Ilorin, accused the State Local Government Staff Pension Board of not following due process in the payment of gratuity to retired workers in the State.
The Party claimed that “special consideration is given to supporters of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and associates of the governor’s political appointees in the payment of gratuity in the State.”
The party also rubbished the claim by the State government that N100m is released monthly for payment of gratuity, arguing that the impact was not being felt by the pensioners.
“In the past few months, we received several reports from local government pensioners who informed us that the Staff Pension Board is not following due process in selection of pensioners to receive part of their gratuity every month as priority is given to APC apologists.
“In the light of this, we did our findings which revealed that every month, the Chairman of the Kwara Local Government Service Commission appointed by Governor Abdulrazaq, do prepare a list of names of pensioners submitted by APC executive members, House of Assembly members and political appointees of Governor Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq.
“For instance, for the month of January 2022, the likes of APC stalwarts and several appointees of the governor all submitted between 2 to 3 names of pensioners that were paid between N50,000 and N150,000 for the month.
“Despite claims by the Abdulrazaq administration that it had increased monthly release of funds for payment of pension to N100million, a lot of the pensioners are still being paid between N50,000 and N100,000 as gratuity.
“Whereas during the last dispensation, the least amount each pensioner was paid was N200,000 monthly due to the drop in allocation, with no consideration for political affiliation as it is the case today under the present APC administration,” the statement reads in part.
The party further noted that “it is painful that pensioners were not captured in the recent implementation of the consequential adjustment component of the new minimum wage.”
“This shows that the Abdulrazaq government does not care about the welfare of the senior citizens,” it added.
