Following the 21-day ultimatum given to the Imo State government by the state chapter of the Organised Labour over the negative treatment the retirees are receiving from the government, a joint forum of the South East Zone of the Nigeria Union of Pensioners (NUP) and the Organised Labour yesterday threatened to paralyse the activities of the state government if it failed to stop the ongoing 40 percent payment of pensions to pensioners.
Rising from a meeting of all affiliate labour unions in Owerri, the Imo State capital, the forum headed by the chairman of the south east zonal NUP, Comrade Chukwuma Udensi and the leader of the Organised Labour in Imo State, Comrade Austin Chilakpu, said the Imo State Government must rescind its ant-human decisions against the pensioners and pay them their pension entitlements in full or face the wrath of labour.
The forum, which condemned in its entirety, the ill treatment meted out to the senior citizens, expressed worry over the alarming rate of deaths among retired workers of the state, a development it attributed to the negative treatment of retirees by the state government.
It lamented that while other south east states had remained consistent in paying pensioners their entitlements, Imo which should have set a good example for others, was now slashing pensions down to 40 percent and threatened to down tools if the government continued with the ongoing fraud against the senior citizens.
The forum added that the penchant for humiliating Imo retirees who served their state with their entire youthful age was becoming sad, because the state government believed that the pensioners can no longer defend themselves.
The forum therefore warned that failure to rescind its decisions against the pensioners would lead to NUP and the organized labour mobilizing others in the south east to make the state ungovernable.
Earlier, Comrade Chilapku described the 40 percent pensions collected by some pensioners as something done under duress and as a result, would not stand but must be fully completed when the organized labour came out fully.
He said the organized labour in the state was not silent on the issue because “It is only someone who wants to die in service that will keep quiet while pensioners suufer humiliation”.
In his address, the national vice president of the NUP, Chief Emeka Onwumere, called on the organized labour not to abandon the pensioners of Imo State because doing that would amount to them shooting themselves on the foot because according to him, every worker is a potential pensioner.
