Thirteen (13) Permanent Secretaries alongside 2,888 other categories of civil servants are yet to be paid their retirement benefits by Zamfara State Government.
Secretary to the State/Local contributory Pension Commission Mansur Mustapha Kaura made the declaration when he featured in Thunder Blowers TV show program on Sunday.
He said before the coming of the present administration, retired civil servants do not know their fate since the administration had stopped remitting anything for the payment of gratuity.
But he added that, when this administration came on board, the Governor gave a matching order for the release of N100 million naira monthly for settlement of the backlog of gratuity.
“To show you the extent of the problem, if the statutory N100 million naira is released to the commission this January the money will be used to settle the retirement benefits of those civil servants that retired in February 2016” Kaura added.
“He noted that if not for the high number of the retired permanent secretaries whose benefit consumes a lot the N100 million naira can settle between 40-50 retired civil servants” Kaura added.
He further explained that retirement benefits of a single permanent Secretary cost almost N14 billion naira and most a time if they are included in the payment list they consume a substantial part of the money.
He said despite the improvement made by the present administration in settling the backlog of pension arrears there is a burden of over N4 million naira gratuities yet to be settled by the government.
On the delay of the payment of monthly pension, Kaura said the delay is not deliberate and that since the commission took over the payment of the monthly pension, there is no time when the pension fund was released to the commission without immediately paying the pensioners
