By: Barbara Bako, Abuja
Former Nigerian telecoms employees have appealed to President Bola Tinubu to direct the Federal Ministry of Finance to release their funds, saying members are dying of poverty.
The former NITEL and MTEL employees said the previous government had agreed to pay the counterpart fund to the companies’ liquidator to settle entitlements of the former staff.
Mr. Micheal Ulenze, who is the team lead of the concerned members of NITEL/MTEL staff under 10 made the appeal during a protest held at the Finance Ministry on Tuesday in Abuja
According to him, the reason for the protest is for the current administration led by President Bola Tinubu to help them recover their funds which was approved by the former President.
Mr. Ulenze said “The matter has been judged by the federal high court and the judgement was that they should pay us, then during Buhari’s regime the monies was signed and the ministry should pay us that is the ministry of finance and Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE).”
“Now we keep on coming and they keep on dribbling and delaying us. Telling us stories the secretary will sign, Permanent Secretary will sign, DG will sign and so on. We keep on coming and this is 17 good years that we are owed. We want justice on this matter to prevail,” he added.
When asked if anyone from the group has received their payment, the team lead said “Only pensioners that are with Pension Transitional Arrangement Directorate (PTAD) have been paid. The court classified us as under 10 we are not pensioners we are disengaged staff.”
On the sideline of the protest another leader of the group, Mr. Okoh Vincent told Daily Commerce Correspondent that the payment which was approved by the former administration was never paid to them.
“The former Minister of Finance, Zainab Ahmed followed up with the payment. Her last day in office directed the Presidential Initiative on Continues Audit (PICA) to meet with BPE since the BPE were planning to carry out verification on the matter we are talking about. When our leaders went to the BPE, they sent them back to the ministry of finance to meet with the PICA,” he narrated
He said “They have been pushing our leaders up and down. None of them came out to tell us the truth, every day whenever they have a meeting with our leaders they will tell them not to worry our verification timetable will be out. We are beginning to wonder whether our leaders are collaborating with these people to take our money.”
“We are under 10, most of our leaders are pensioners if they loose from here they will go back and collect their pensions and we don’t have anything. Our children are dying, they cannot go to school. Our members are dying we don’t know what to do again so we organized ourselves and come,” he Lamented.
