Retirees of Lagos State Water Corporation (LWC)are seeking payment of their pension benefits more than four years after leaving the service. The senior citizens lamented that they are in pains as the effects of the economic downturn bite harder, Omobola Tolu-kusimo reports.
End of the year usually signals the Yuletide season and for many, it is time to celebrate. But for about 200 retirees of the Lagos State Water Corporation (LWC), it is another time to recount their moment of anguish and years of sufferings and hunger.
This is owing to the non-payment of over N1 billion pension benefits for over four years by the management of LWC, headed by the Group Managing Director (GMD), Mr. Shayo Holloway.
The senior citizens acting under the aegis of Lagos Water Corporation Association of Retirees, lamented that having served for the mandatory 35 years before retirement, they are under the Contributory Pension Scheme of the Pension Reform Act 2004 and as repealed by Pension Act, 2014.
According to the retirees, their sufferings have reached a climax that their children are now being driven out of schools due to nonpayment of school fees. They lamented that their landlords have ejected some of them from their houses while many of them have suffered deterioration in their health conditions and are on their sick beds. Other have died, the group added.
While they worked, the management of the corporation deducted the 7.5 per cent employee contribution from their salary but did not remit regularly to their Pension Fund Administrator (PFA) as and when due, neither did they remit the 7.5 per cent expected of them as employers.
Sunday Oladele who retired in 2010 after 35 years of service at the LWC said he does not know how much he is being owed.
According to him, he has not received any pension benefits since he retired.
Recounting his ordeal, he said he has relocated to his village while his wife and children have been scattered around the country.
He said he lives from hands to mouth, gradually turing into a destitute. He urged the state government to intervene so that he could get his benefits and discharge his responsibilities as a responsible father.
Another retiree, Patrick Ademoyegun, said he is yet to receive his retirement benefits from the government.
Ademoyegun who retired as a principal staff from the water corporation in January this year after serving for 35 years said his fear now is that he may eventually not get get any benefit because LWC did remit his contribution to his PFA.
He said: “When the state joined the CPS in 2007, most of us were afraid of joining the new scheme because of the insincerity of our management. I was forced to join when they said they will not pay my salary unless I register with a PFA.
“After I joined the new scheme, I discovered that the management was deducting the 7.5 per cent contribution from my salary but were not remitting as and when due. The worst part of it is that they did not contribute the 7.5 per cent required as my employer.”
Ademoyegun also urged the state government to pay him immediately because he was employed by the state and not LWC.
Secretary to the group, James Ogunwande, who retired in February 1, 2012 as a higher executive officer said he was one of the Corporation’s pension desk officers while in service. He said the retirees had to quickly form an association when it became clear that the current leadership of the coropration did not have any plan to pay them.
He said: “Presently, I live in a church following my eviction from the house I was living by my landlord due to my inability to pay. My children can no longer go to school and are living with my relations.”
The group’s Chairman, Leo Onayemi, lamented that several meetings had been held with the LWC management, Lagos State Pension Commission (LASPEC) and the Lagos State House of Assembly.
He said: “We informed them of our predicament and the need for them to intervene.
“Our GMD does not have the interest of the workers at heart especially retirees because he does not remit pension contribution to PFAs.
“We joined the CPS immediately the state joined in 2007. But the management has been fast in deducting our money but does not remit. The GMD has been at the helms of affairs since 14 years ago. We have exploited all means that we know to appeal to him to remit our contributions. But he keeps telling us lies that the Corporation does not have money. On the average, every month, we make over N60 million so why can’t he pay is our pension?
“When the House of Assembly asked him why we have not been paid, he said he wanted to increase water tariff before he can pay us.”
Onayemi said it is criminal for the GMD to deduct pension contribution from workers’ salaries and not remit same to the respective PFAs. He insisted that it is against the Pension Reform Act 2004 as repealed by the 2014 Pension Act.
In a petition written by the association to the State Governor, Babatunde Fashola, the group stated that it has become pertinent to notify the governor that since the enactment of the New Pension Reform Law, the management of the corporation has never complied with the guidelines that specify the conditions for an early payment of the retirees while toying with the life of retirees that have used the better part of their life to serve the state.
“The retired staff of LWC wish to draw your attention to the luke-warm approach of the management towards the actualisation of the New Reform Pension Law, promulgated by the Federal Government in the 2004, primarily to soften or correct anomalies suspected in the old pension law.
“We retired statutorily under the Pension Law enacted in 2004, but Lagos State Government joined the scheme in 2007 with the slogan ‘Pay As You Go’. We believe that it is the best alternative to the old pension law which will ease the suffering of retirees.
“It is however disappointing that the action of the LWC management has not been encouraging towards meeting with the payment of retirees. To buttress our points, the payment of the monthly deduction to the PFA had not been regular. It also defied section 41(1-4) and other relevant sections under the disguise that there is no money by the management.
“We have made several efforts to let the management of the corporation to see reason to our plight but it has not yielded any positive result. In addition, we organised an interactive family meeting with the management team, chaired by the GMD to know our fate on the issue at stake. It is very sad and painful to state that the organisation has no concrete or specific plan or provision to support the new scheme for its retirees and serving staff. The revelation weakened both the retired and serving staff. We are at the edge of divine intervention.
“Observation from other Ministries, Departments, Local Government and Agencies in Lagos State, indicate regular remission of bonds and other contributory deductions to respective PFA and they are also able to cope with the payment of retirees by direct deduction “Option’.
“We are agitating for the payment of the benefit and entitlement, 35 per cent time value or coupon rate due to affected retirees is to be paid, 45 per cent to serve as dispensation to cushion the effect of arbitrary delay. Payment of interest that might have accrued to affected pensioners as a result of non-remittance of deduction.”
In addition, he said it has been observed that LWC lacks financial capacity to shoulder the retirees’ benefits and burdens.
“In order to save them and encourage the serving staff to have hope and a joyful end of their journey, we hereby appeal to the state for financial aid. We also suggest direct deduction from the subvention and other benefit due to LWC from the state government. “This is to be remitted directly to the PFA; we strongly implore your office to officially intervene by rescuing us from the depth of hunger and starvation that have resulted to untimely death as a result of financial slavery,” he added.
Reacting to claims made by the retirees in an interview with The Nation, Mr. Holloway said it is not true that management is not concerned or not working to pay the retirees their pension benefits.
He noted that if money was physically deducted and not remitted and is misused or mis-appropriated for something else, then one can understand their agitation.
“But the truth of the matter, in a nutshell is that our operational expenditure far exceeds available funds on a monthly basis. So what we have been doing at the first line of the monthly expenditure is that we ensure we are able to meet salaries of staff. We make various deductions on paper to arrive at the net.
“To be able to generate more funds to pay pension, we are through the state government, addressing the issue of low tariff. Today, what we charge for water is unsustainable. The tarrifF was set over 15 years ago and we are charging the equivalent of 50 koko per litre. In other words, we are charging N50 per cubic metre which is N50 for five drums of 200 litre capacity each.
“This is not sustainable and the government has agreed that our tarrif is low, and that is currently being reviewed by the regulatory commission. We are also trying to improve on our collection efficiency whereby we can be more efficient in revenue collection. We have been able to pay some pensioners from the old pension scheme from the available resources that we have but we need government’s intervention in this case of retirees under the new scheme to assist us to offset the liabilities.”
The GMD, however, sought the understanding of the retirees, adding that the corporation needed about N6billion to run its operation successfully but has been managing the little funds available to it.
“One of the strategy we want to pursue is that people pay for water consumed. We are still talking to the government to assist us. I will be meeting with the Commissioner for Economic Planning and Budget tomorrow to discuss and try to resolve this issue. LWC is not the only agency that owes its staff pension. There are other agencies with challenges and we are taking it to the state government.
“The key thing is that we need to improve on our collection efficiency. Our tarrif needs to be reviewed. We are not happy that pensions are not being paid and it is not as if we have the money somewhere and do not want to pay. If we have the money today, we will not hesitate to make the payment. We will keep talking to the State Government and I assure the retirees that they will soon be paid.”
Commissioner for Establishment, Training and Pensions, Mrs. Florence Oguntuase, told The Nation that the pensioners, whose problems mostly rose from the old pension scheme, would soon smile.
She said the retirees would soon be paid their pension arrears.
“There is no doubt we have issue with few parastatals and we are taking it on board. We are going to pay each parastatals on its own merit. Before we were going to lump them together but we discovered that their cases are different from each other.
“What the executive council has asked us to do is to take them one after the other. We have taken on pensioners of Water Corporation and the matter will soon be resolved. We are not leaving them to their fate. We do hope that the problems will be solved with the State’s 2015 budget presented by the Governor, Babatunde Fashola,” she said.
