BENIN-CITY – The Edo Head of Service, Mr Jerry Obazele on Tuesday in Benin berated the Edo chapter of the Nigeria Labour Congress NLC over the planned commencement of the contributory pension scheme in the state by May ending.
Obazele told the Newsmen in an interview on Tuesday in Benin that the leadership of the NLC were trying to mislead the workers in the state.
The state chapter of the NLC had on May 10 given the state government seven days ultimatum to stop the planned commencement of the scheme.
The NLC  were resisting the commencement of the scheme because they alleged that the head of service had singlehandedly chosen a Pension Fund Administrator (PFA) for the workers.
Reacting, Obazele said Edo government has not and does not have plans to chose  PFA for any worker.
“What we have done is to screen and harmonise a number of PFAs at our disposal. workers will chose from the recommended list of PFAs.
“The law establishing the pension act allows every worker to chose his or her PFA from a recommended list provided by government. The purpose is to guide workers properly.
“I constituted a 40 -man committee from the state public service and an invitation was extended to the NLC but they never showed up.
” My predecessor recommended the PFAs, I only expanded the scope by screening and harmonising them.
“The law has been passed and domesticated in the state. We would have started in March 2014 but we needed to sort out the issues of the PFAs.
“The stage we are now we feel we can take off though not totally because we still need to put other things in place. It is an ongoing exercise,” he said.
According to the head of service, We are losing a lot by not starting when we should have started. Those who have started know that the scheme is good.
Obazele assured that workers interest would always been taken care off adding that, the contributory pension scheme was in the best interest of workers.