The Rivers State Local Government Service Commission has directed all the 23 Local Government Areas in the State to established Pension Units in the next two weeks.
This directive was handed down in Port Harcourt by the Chairman of the Commission, Chief Azubuike Nmerukini JP, during a meeting with top administrators of the third tier system in the State.
Chief Nmerukini stated that the directive was sequel to the hardship encountered by retiring civil servants of the Unified Local Government Service.
“The Commission will not accept a situation where retiring staff spend several weeks or months moving back and front awaiting for their payment without success”, he stated.
The Chairman attributed such situation to lack of pension units to adequately guide staff due retirement and advised staff to forward their exit three months to their existence from the service to facilitate early payment of their benefits.
Chief Nmerukini, however, observed with regret the high rate of falsification of records by staff, especially age declaration.
He said “some staff unknown to them have changed their age to the point that their children are now older than them”.
The Chairman continued “some staff due to the number of times they changed their records, they passed their First School Leaving Certificate when they are in their mothers womb.
All staff who hid their original documents should bring them out or their papers will not be processed for payment of their pension”, Nmerukini warned.
He assured retiring staff whose documents are in order of the payment of their gratuity and pension three months after retirement.
The Chairman disclosed that to facilitate the pension process, a Retirement Sub-Committee has been set up in the Commission.
Speaking on behalf of the Local Government Administrators, the State President of the Nigeria Union of Local Government Employees (NULGE), Barrister Frankly Ajunwo commended the Commission for the meeting and assured that the directors would co-operate to ease the difficulty experience by retiring staff. ###
