The Chairman, Kano State Pension Fund Trustees, Sani Gabasawa has revealed that the state government owes retired workers N20 billion gratuities.
Gabasawa made this known to newsmen while reacting to some allegations leveled against him over payment of gratuities and death benefits.
According to him, ”the pension trustees have not been able to pay gratuities to retirees since June 2016, situation that accumulated the backlog to the tune of N20 billion for over 31,000 retirees awaiting their payment.”
He also attributed the backlog of the gratuities to the failure of some government organisations to remit their monthly 8 percent pension fees to the trustees, while some agencies could not remit the money fully.
The Chairman noted that due to failure of some organisations to remit the 8 percent, the pension trustees owes them the sum of N28 billion.
“We pay N1.2 billion pension to retirees every month. Every month the pension increases. We are in a difficult situation. There must be delay in the payment of gratuities in this state because the state has not paid gratuities since 2016 due to lack of fund.
“At the moment, we are owed N20 billion Naira and government organisations don’t pay their statutory 8% to us, hence they owe us N28 billion. So, you see how the situation has become complicated,” he said.
Gabasawa however expressed hope that the state government would soon continue to pay gratuities to the retirees as the State Governor, Abdullahi Ganduje had formed a committee to ratify all discrepancies in a bid to continue disbursement of the retired workers’ entitlements.
On the allegations that he engaged in negotiation with retirees to pay certain percentage out of their entitlements before they are paid their gratuities, Gabasawa denied the allegation and ask any retiree who paid a dime as bribe before getting his gratuities to come forward.
He also described as blatant lies, the allegations that he appointed his sons in key position at the pension trustees and that he used them to serve as fronters of his alleged shady deals.
Source: VON
