ABUJA – Mr. Bunmi Ogunkolade, the Senior Assistant General Secretary of Nigeria Union of Pensioners (NUP)has blamed banks for delaying the payment of nine months arrears to pensioners.
Ogunkolade told newsmen in Abuja that the Federal Government, through the Pension Transitional Arrangement Department (PTAD), paid the nine-month 33 per cent increment in December 2014.
According to him, the arrears covered January to September 2014 as promised by the director-general of the department.
He said that any federal pensioners who had yet to receive his/her money should blame the bank and not the Federal Government.
He said some banks such as Wema, Fidelity and ECOBank had yet to pay pensioners.
“The increment arrears dated back to July 2010, which the Federal Government commenced payment in October 2014.
“In further negotiations, they decided to pay the arrears from January to September and by December 30, the pensioners were able to get the nine-month arrears payment even though it was a bit delayed due to lack of funds.
“And some banks because of their internal arrangement, as am speaking to you now some banks are yet to pay pensioners, like Wema bank, Fidelity bank and Eco bank, so pensioners that are using those banks may not have gotten their arrears but others have gotten.
“ We want to let the public know that when money is released to banks, they will delay this money either by trading with it or doing one thing or the other.
“We, on our part, we report to the paying authority which is PTAB and Ministry of Finance and they will take it up from there, to to know why some banks will be involved in things like that.”
He stressed that pensioners should be given priority when it comes to the issue of payment, as they had served the country for 30 to 35 years.
