While the PHCN workers refer to the alleged N88 billion as the accumulated sum of the 25 per cent deduction from their salaries, the minister of power, Prof. Barth Nnaji, issued a statement yesterday emphatically saying “no PHCN employee contributed his or her salary to the pension scheme or any account at all to the scheme up to June 30, 2004, when the PHCN was allowed by law to operate an in-house defined pension scheme.’’
The minister, who expressed regret that the PHCN despite being a government agency was yet to comply with the pension law, eight years after it took effect, declared ‘’if there were contributions to the pension scheme by any PHCN personnel at all, they are not reflected or bank accounts of the pension scheme.’’
Rather he said, what the PHCN management had been doing is to set aside N3 billion every year from internally-generated revenue to pay retiring staff members on the basis of 25 per cent purportedly taken from their salary in flagrant violation of the pension of the PFA.
In a statement issued by his special assistant, C Don Adinuba, the minister said the trustees of the PHCN pension scheme are officials of the trade unions in the power sector and the PHCN management. He said the federal government has never been involved in the management of the PHCN pension scheme.
‘’In order words, if there is any case of fraud or misappropriation of funds, the workers should know those to be held responsible,” he said.
The statement also noted that the PHCN management was able to pay staff severance benefits for a couple of employees retiring annually ‘’which led workers to assume that there were enough funds to settle their disengagement benefit,’’ but with the mass retirement occasioned by privatisation, ‘’it has become crystal clear that there were virtually no funds to pay the retirement benefits of the almost 50,000-strong workforce.”
Nnaji described the PHCN trade unionist claim that there was a total sum of N88 billion in the pension account as ‘’far from the truth,’’ adding that the account has never had more than N3 billion, and he invited the civil society organisations to verify the claim.
The minister said, to prevent a situation where several thousands of PHCN staff members would retire without much in their name years after service to the nation, the federal government decided to pay the workers 15 per cent of their salary covering contributions by the employees and their employer from July 1, 2004, to June 30, 2012, as part of a severance package.
The offer has, however, been rejected by the workers who insist on 25 per cent of their salary which they have contributed, the statement added.
Meanwhile, the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has called on the National Assembly and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to urgently investigate the missing pension fund.
Deputy president of the Congress Comrade Joe Ajaero, who spoke to LEADERSHIP yesterday, said a public hearing should be conducted to find the actual culprits in the suspected fraud.
Comrade Ajaero, who is also the general secretary of the National Union of Electricity Employees (NUEE), said such investigation would expose what money was deducted from the workers’ wages as well as who manages the fund.
“What we are saying is that the National Assembly should call for a public hearing with a view to unravelling the rots in the power sector. This is because we don’t manage the fund and we don’t know how much is in the account but we are aware that government deducted 25 per cent from our salary and so they cannot pay us just 15 per cent.
“The EFCC can also come in to investigate whether it is the union leaders that manage the money deducted from the workers’ salaries because if we know about it we will go and collect it; so the minister of power should stop playing politics with the matter,’’ Ajaero said.
He added that “the managing director of PHCN, Hussein Labo, is now working with the minister of power and should tell Nigerians the truth about the workers’ pension money”.
However, between 2004 and now, the PHCN has had two substantive managing directors – Joe Makoju and Hussein Labo.
When LEADERSHIP contacted Labo, who is the current managing director of PHCN and an active player with the minister of power in the privatisation process, to comment on the state of the fund, an SMS from him simply said: “The minister has set up a panel of investigation; they can go and give evidence with proof.’’
NLC said that its leadership will not attend the meeting called by the federal government through the minister of labour and productivity, Emeka Wogu, over its intention to embark on strike, scheduled to hold Wednesday.
Deputy president of the NLC, Comrade Promise Adewusi, told LEADERSHIP that the congress at its NEC meeting in Benin, Edo State, capital said it will “shun every gathering concerning the minister because of the way he handled the PHCN labour Issues.
According to Adewusi, “We said during our National Executive Council (NEC) in Benin that the minister did not handle the Labour issues in the ongoing privatisation exercise in the power sector well, which is resulting into government forcing workers to collect their severance package when the matter is yet to be resolved between FG and the workers.”
The labour leader also told LEADERSHIP that the group is doing everything possible to ensure that peace return to Nigeria in view of recent developments.
He also said that what is happening in the oil sector is alarming and urged the president to address it or the congress will pull out their members involved in oil production.
He said, “NEC acknowledges that illicit activities in the form of occasional illegal bunkering and pipeline vandalism have been familiar features of oil production in the Niger Delta, but wishes to reiterate that the same cannot be said to be the situation at the moment as nearly 50 per cent of Nigeria’s crude is stolen by the high and the mighty.
“NEC is outraged by this heinous crime and calls on Mr. President to speedily take the necessary action(s) to stop this show of shame.
“NEC warns that in the event Mr. President fails to act within a reasonable time, it will take all the steps necessary, including mobilising its members to stop oil production.”
He also said that the Congress would meet today (Monday) to look at the letter addressed to them by the labour minister to know what the invitation is all about.
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