PENSIONERS CRY OUT

We write On behalf of ourselves and thousands of non-contributory pensioners who have concluded their verification exercises at Lagos since July 2010.

We were paid June salary after the exercise and up till date nothing has been received again. It should be noted that many pensioners died during the exercise in July and many are still dying for non payment of their pensions.

Some of the pensioners with whom we had the verification exercise use the same bank and branch. They had received their July, August and September salaries about a month ago while hundred of thousands have not received theirs.

We had on several occasions appealed to the authorities to give us a definite date on which our pension will be paid to enable us to make our budget but they kept paying us when they choose . In a case where you collect your February salary in May and June in October, there is no way you can make any meaningful budget.

Many pensioners are yet to collect any salary since January this year and many have not been paid since April 2009. This is October yet we have not been paid our July, August and September pension. We are dying of hunger; we can not feed ourselves and families not to talk of our health care and school fees of our children.

We have borrowed money to the extent that nobody is willing to give us loan anymore and everybody is tired of selling things to us on credit. We learnt that they are using our pension money to do business with the banks. We are dying every day please-save our souls. We beg you in the name of God to please do something urgently and order them to pay our monthly pension without delay.