Contributory Pension: NLC condemns exemption of law enforcement agencies in bill
The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has condemned in totality, the bill exempting military and law enforcement agencies from the National Contributory Pension Scheme.
Comrade Wabba, NLC President, expressed his discontempt during a delegates’ visit to the office of the Nigeria Union of Local Government Employees (NULGE) in continuation of his “Meet the affiliate Tour” led by him.
According to Wabba, “we condemn in very strong terms, the current bill to remove all our military and other law enforcement agencies from the contributory pension scheme”.
He added that “this would lead to the entire collapse of the pension scheme, because presently even with the core civil service, we have a liability of over N6 billion”.
This was a figure that was harmonised between the Senate, House of Representative, Minister of Finance, organised Labour and then the Minister of Budget and Planning.
“The liability as of today of earn allowance of workers and pensioners including deductions stood at over 600 billion, so it is wrong if this bill is allowed to pass through,” he said
Wabba said that if the military and the law enforcement agencies were removed from the contributory pension it would allow the resources to come from the central coffers.
He noted that if this was done, it was obvious that the entire contributory pension scheme would then collapse.
Comrade Wabba, however, said that people assume that over 73 per cent of the entire pension funds which stood at over 6 trillion was already being borrowed through Federal Government Bond and Treasury Bills.
He said that with the new development if the pending bill was allowed to go through there would be a major shock to the economy, therefore, the entire pension contributory scheme would surely collapse.
Speaking, Mr Ibrahim Khaleed, NUGLE President said that the union was facing a lot of challenges, which includes the refusal of Akwa Ibom state government to pay check up dues.
Khaleed noted that others are the non-payment of local government workers’ salaries, poor relationships with leaders, lack of capacity building, non-implementation of N18,000 minimum wage by Zamfara State Government.
“I want to say that the Zamfara state government still pays N6,000 as the minimum wage for its workers, which does not suit the present day realities,” he said.
