An investigative panel set up by the Federal Government to
audit the controversial Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) Superannuation
Pension Fund has discovered that parts of the company’s pension is stashed away
in a bank in the United Kingdom (UK). The amount, totaling £2,204,814.18, which
has been in Barclays Bank for about 21 years, was discovered to have
accumulated from pension deposits for expatriate workers of the power utility and
was believed to have been transferred by its officials long before the National
Electric Power Authority (NEPA) metamorphosed into PHCN.
The panel’s report also indicates that PHCN has in the past
21 years failed to fund its in-house pension scheme, thus putting the future of
its retiring workers in jeopardy. It disclosed that the company has no money to
fund the pension scheme.
The chairman of the eight-man audit panel on PHCN pension,
Mr. Joseph Ajiboye, who is also a former Auditor-General of the Federation
(AGF), said that the panel could not ascertain if officials of PHCN had
continued to remit pension and gratuity deductions to the foreign account,
considering that the last expatriate pensioner of the utility is reported to
have died.
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