Yemisi Izuora
The Nsukka Patriotic Movement (NPM) has commended the Governor of Enugu State, Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi for taking bold steps in the payment of pension to aged retired civil servants in the state.
The group said the setting up of a 12- member Nsukka Urban Renewal Committee chaired by Architect Chris Offor, to draw up the proposal for the Nsukka Master Plan, and the decision to promptly pay June salary to workers and two month arrears of pensions to senior citizens in the state should be emulated by other states.
In a statement by its national president Comrade Ibuchukwu Ezike, the NPM said, “This is a complete demonstration of sympathy with, and show of concern for the workers who are the engine room of every government.
“However, NPM is worried and hugely concerned about the conditions of the local government workers in our state, especially in Nsukka cultural zone, where salaries and allowances are owed to workers for five months and above by some local governments.
We are glad that His Excellency, governor Ugwuanyi, has expeditiously ordered the local government chairmen to pay up workers’ salaries especially with the release of bailout fund to the states by the Federal government.
We urge him to carefully monitor these local government chairmen to ensure that they carry out his directive without delay or be sanctioned. We insist that it is a sin to owe labourers their wages who have faithfully discharged their duties” Ezike added.
Continuing, the group said that in order to find a lasting solution to this malady, the NPM recommended the setting up a Monitoring Committee of honest, fearless but Godly citizens who should supervise the activities of local governments in the state in order to ensure that they meet the objectives for which they were created which include radical development of the rural communities under their jurisdiction and welfare of their staff.
The Nsukka Master Plan, if produced, approved and implemented, will help uplift the status of the university town and make it have a modern look as a town housing the nation’s premier university, the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN), Ezike said adding that it will also prepare the university town to possess the befitting features and capacity to host the Capital of the proposed Adada State which was recommended as one of the new four states to be created out of the South-East zone by the 2014 National Conference convened by former President Goodluck Jonathan.