The 2010 retirees of the Lagos State Polytechnic (LASPOTECH) (now Lagos State University of Science and Technology), Ikorodu, have again appealed to the state governor, Mr Babajide Sanwo-Olu, to use his position as a visitor to the institution to effect the payment of all their outstanding entitlements.
The ex-workers, numbering about 140, said they had served the institution meritoriously between two and three decades and, therefore, did not deserve to be unfairly treated and subjected to hardship as they are currently going through.
They said they could not fathom the reason they are still being denied their entitlements many years after their retirement, disclosing that the development has put them into financial mess and consequently sent many to their early graves.
They said though they retired under the old pension scheme, they had been collecting their pension on a monthly basis before the State Pension Commission, suddenly in July 2014, ordered its stoppage on the excuse that “we ought to have retired under the new pension scheme” and since then this problem of payment had started.
In a letter to the governor, dated September 11, 2023 and signed by the chairman and secretary of the group, Mrs Olubunmi Aina and Dr Philip Adepoju respectively, the retirees asked the governor to effect “the immediate reinstatement of their full pension based on the salary structure operating in the polytechnic then; and payment of the 15/16 months pension stoppage from June 2016 to August/September 2017 as the case might be.
They also asked for the “payment of the balance of gratuity arising from the upward review of salaries on July 1, 2009, payment of pension arrears of 14 and 20 months to academic and non-academic staff; and payment of difference in pension since September/October 2017, respectively, till date.”
They declared that no fewer than 16 among them had died between 2021 and now, just because they lacked the money to take good care of themselves.
They said that the governor would need to intervene in the matter and resolve it once and for all in order to save them from living in pain and also from untimely death.
They said they had appealed to him officially before and also to the state House of Assembly, among others with no success.
“That is why we are making a passionate appeal to you again as our governor. We believe you will help us out particularly now that feeding is very difficult for many homes in the country,” they stated in the letter.
. TheWitness
