Mairiga who made the disclosure in Yola on Tuesday, December 15, added that the situation accounts for the low turnout of pensioners in the state for the ongoing verification exercise.
He said: “Adamawa is the state where you find the least paid pensioners in the country; we still have pensioners that collect N2, 000, N3, 000 and N4, 000 as pension”.
“There was salary increase in 2003 but we did not benefit; there was another in 2005, but we were not captured. We also lost out in the minimum wage increase of 2010.
“Some of our members, out of frustration, vowed not to show up for the ongoing verification exercise, saying they would rather forfeit their N2000 or N3000 monthly pension,” Mairiga added.
Mairiga urged the state government to look into the plight of pensioners in the state as they had been neglected for years by past administrations.
“Those category of retirees have no houses of their own; they need the money to erect a mud huts in their villages and wait for the end. ” It is not proper to deny retirees their right when it matters most; every able worker today is a potential retiree, hence the need for all stakeholders to start taking pension matters more seriously,” he maintained.
He said that retirees in the state were being owed about N8 billion accumulated pension and gratuity arrears, and urged the government take steps, such as allocating between N200 million to N500 million monthly for the clearing of such arrears.
Source... Vanguard
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