Ortom inaugurates contributory pension scheme in Benue

Benue State Governor, Samuel Ortom, yesterday inaugurated the contributory pension scheme (CPS) in the state to address the perennial problem of non-payment of pensions and gratuities to retired workers.

Speaking at the event at the Government House, Makurdi, Governor Ortom said the scheme was long overdue, considering the sufferings retirees who were owed pension and gratuity go through regularly.

The governor said the Pension Reform Law said the employer, government in this case, shall contribute an additional 10 per cent of the monthly emoluments of each worker enrolled into the scheme while the workers were to contribute eight per cent of their monthly emoluments into the workers retirement savings.

“This is no doubt a painful, but necessary sacrifice that we all must make in order to overcome and put behind us the problem of huge pension liabilities with its accompanying pain and misery to unpaid retired staff.”

The governor, who said pension gulped more than N700 million monthly said, out of the N49 billion arrears he inherited from previous governments, he had been able to pay part of it.

“I am not happy seeing my fathers and mothers, who are on drugs because of their age, not been paid. I am deeply concerned about their plight. Once we begin to implement this, we can have access to the funds there to cushion the challenges.”

Governor Ortom noted that; “A lot of people have retired, but the wage bill, instead of dropping, is going up,” adding that he has “discovered massive fraud in the civil service and those people found culpable will pay dearly.”

The Director-General, National Pension Commission, Abuja, Aisha Umar, commended Governor Ortom for taking a step in the right direction by committing to the welfare of Benue workers during and after their retirement.

She therefore urged the state government to carry out massive enlightenment and sensitisation of workers across the state to educate them on the merit of pension scheme to enable them key in.

Chairman of the state PenCom, Mr. Terna Ahua Terna, said the flag off marked a milestone not just in the progress being made by the commission, but also in terms of finding lasting solution to the thorny issue of payment of retirement benefits to retirees in the state.

Ahua noted that given the paucity of funds accruing to the state, the increase had placed a substantial burden on the finances of the state in terms of payment of pensions and gratuities thereby resulting in delayed and non-payment of benefits to workers.

He admitted that the delayed and non-payment of pensions and gratuities had brought untold hardship to pensioners in Benue, thus prompting the domestication of the National PenCom Reform Act, 2014 that introduced the contributory pension scheme (CPS) in the country.

The state PenCom chairman stated that the CPS scheme as enshrined in the state pension reform law, guaranteed the contribution of 10 per cent of the total monthly emolument of a worker into his/her Retirement Savings Account (RSA) by the state government on a monthly basis, while the worker would contribute eight per cent of his/her total monthly emolument.