Governor Bala Mohammed of Bauchi State on Wednesday flagged off the payment of N10 billion in outstanding gratuity to 1,700 state and local government retirees from 2012 and 2013 at the Local Government Pensions Board.
Represented by his deputy, Mohammed Auwal Jatau, the Governor said the payment is the first batch of a wider exercise covering retirees with outstanding gratuity obligations from 2012 to 2016.
Mohammed said the government had validated records showing 5,736 beneficiaries with outstanding gratuity obligations totaling N11.704 billion between 2012 and 2016.
According to him, the figure comprises 3,570 state government retirees owed N6.133 billion for the period, and 2,256 local government retirees owed N5.579 billion.
The governor added that subsequent batches would be paid in chronological order by year of retirement.
He said the government inherited the backlog amid difficult fiscal circumstances but had decided to balance infrastructure investment with attention to retirees’ welfare.
“My administration inherited a backlog stretching as far back as 2012 amid difficult fiscal circumstances, but decided that investment in infrastructure must be balanced with attention to human welfare,” he said.
Mohammed said a verification and disbursement committee headed by Sabiu Baba had been constituted to oversee the process and directed that the exercise be conducted transparently and without unnecessary bottlenecks.
He said retirees should not be subjected to humiliation during the process, noting that the funds represented the welfare of individuals and families who had waited for years to receive their gratuity.
The Speaker of the Bauchi State House of Assembly, Abubakar Suleiman, said the House had approved the government’s request for N10 billion to commence the payment.
He commended the governor for acting on the House’s resolution to address the outstanding gratuity.
Veteran journalist and recipient of A.B.C Yola, Reporter of the Year Award (1997), Hassan Umar Shallpella, works with WAP as a Regional Correspondence. He was trained at Institute of Mass Communication and Technology Jos and Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria, Training School Lagos.He was a News desk Editor and a Correspondent at the Punch newspaper and till 2019, was the Deputy Editor ofThe Scope newspaper.
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