The Minister of Power, Prof. Barth Nnaji, made this known in Abuja yesterday after he presented report of the ministry’s budget performance to President Goodluck Jonathan at the State House.
Nnaji said that apart from the alleged fraud, the leadership of the union had been engaged in dissemination wrong information to their members to incite the workers against government.
He said the ploy by the union leadership was to blackmail and coerce the Federal Government into exempting them from complying with the national pension laws.
He dismissed the information being circulated by the leadership of the union that the severance pay of the workers would be pegged at N85, 000.
On the 2012 budget implementation, Nnaji put the budget performance at 52.9 per cent.
He explained that N75.5 billion was proposed for capital projects expenditure but the National Assembly raised it to N78 billion to accommodate the members’ constituency projects.
Nnaji said that N21.5 billion had been released, while N11.4 billion out of it had been utilised, which translated to 52.9 per cent.
The minister said that a target of 18 months had been set to complete the metering of electricity consumers in the country, in conjunction with the incoming private investors.
The 2013 budget, he added, would see to the completion of studies on setting up coal-powered plants in Kogi and Enugu states, as well as hydro-power plants in Mambilla and Zungeru.
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