Governor Babagana Umara Zulum of Borno State on Monday inaugurated a committee that will verify retired workers across the 27 local government areas of the state in preparation for payment of pensions and gratuities government is owing retirees.
Inaugurating at the government house, Maiduguri, Zulum announced that Government will clear all backlogs of gratuities for workers who retired from 2012 to date.
He lamented that, the local government system has over the years been ineffective in discharging its statutory obligation.
The Governor assured of his administration’s commitment to reverse the unhealthy development by making the local government system work again. He recalled far reaching measures put in place, which include ; setting up of two high-powered verification and Biometric data-capture committees; one on Local Government Staff and the other on Primary School Teachers.
On the committee he was inaugurating, Zulum explained that procedural and administrative challenges in the payment of Local Government Pensioners necessitated the 14-member group to proffer solutions.
The committee’s purpose, he said, is to determine the number of genuine local government Pensioners and the precise co-relation between the total number of pensioners and cumulative amount of pension and gratuities owed them.
After ascertaining numbers and figures, the Committee is to effect payment of gratuities of cleared pensioners cleared without further but through a phase by phase model, among others.
The committee has a seasoned technocrat, Ibrahim Lawalam as its Chairman.
