FG approves 25% pay-off for electricity workers

After protracted negotiations, electricity workers have sealed a deal with the Federal Government to end the lingering crisis over their pension payout.

In an agreement reached at the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, the Federal Government agreed to pay the workers’ pension that had accrued by June 30, 2007 on the basis of 25 per cent of their annual salaries. However, the payment will be based on the new conditions of service that came into effect in 2010, while pension accruals from July 1, 2007 will be based on 15 per cent of annual salaries as contained in the Pension Reform Act, 2004.

The workers had been at loggerheads with the Federal Government since 2010 over what their terminal benefits should be.

While the former Minister of Power, Prof. Bart Nnaji, had insisted that the workers should be paid on the basis of the 2004 PRA, the workers had insisted that they must be paid according to their Superannuation Fund, which made them to be entitled to 25 per cent.

Present at the meeting were the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Senator Anyim Pius Anyim; Minister of Labour, Chief Emeka Wogu; Minister of State for Power, Mrs. Zainab Kuchi; President, Trade Union Congress, Mr. Peter Esele; and Secretary General, National Union of Electricity Employees, Mr. Joseph Ajearo.

Anyim signed the agreement on behalf of the Federal Government, while Esele and Ajearo signed on behalf of the workers.

£2 Million PHCN Fund stashed away in Barclays Bank

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.