23 April 2015, Abuja – A total of 1,169 workers of the defunct Power Holding Company of Nigeria have not been paid their terminal benefits, the Bureau of Public Enterprises has said.
The Director-General, BPE, Mr. Benjamin Dikki, disclosed this while briefing the National Council on Privatisation, according to a statement made available to our correspondent in Abuja on Wednesday by the Head of Public Communications at the privatisation agency, Mr. Chigbo Anichebe.
According to him, 46,744 out of the 47,913 bonafide workers, representing 98 per cent of the workforce of the defunct PHCN, have been paid their entitlements amounting to N373,170,291,200.38.
The BPE helmsman said only 1,169 of the 47,913 workers of the defunct PHCN had yet to be paid.
He said the number included workers who had left before severance payment; those being processed for validation; and those yet to be identified by the PHCN as genuine workers, adding that the working group was looking into the cases to arrive at a final closure.
Dikki also told the NCP chaired by Vice President Namadi Sambo that 2,791 retired staff members of the PHCN, representing 65 per cent of the retirees, had been paid N16,414,926,902.38.
He said 1,516 retirees had so far failed to turn up for verification, or were still undergoing further verification, or their next of kin had not been able to produce the necessary court papers.
Responding to the briefing, the NCP noted the progress achieved by the implementation committee on the payment of the severance, pension and gratuity of the workers and retirees of PHCN and directed the committee to hand over to the BPE all information and documents concerning the staff and pensioner verification and payment.
The council also directed that the process of verification and payment of all the outstanding cases should continue until the final resolution of the exercise.
The implementation committee was constituted in March 2013 with the mandate to implement the agreement reached by the government with the power sector labour unions in December 2012.
The objective was to facilitate the payment of the entitlements of all the workers of the PHCN and ensure that there were no encumbrances as regards the handover of the successor companies to the respective investors.
– Punch
