From Sola Ojo, Kaduna
Blind persons in Kaduna State under Nigerian Association for the Blind had begged the State Governor, Nasir El-Rufai to fast-track payment of the entitlements of their retired members to make life more bearable for them.
This group of Nigerians made the plea when they visited the secretariat of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) Kaduna State Council, yesterday.
The Public Relations Officer of the association, Mallam Ismail Abubakar, said the appeal became necessary following the recent disengagement of about 30 of their members from the employment of Kaduna State Government.
“Most of our members attended vocational training centres both in Kaduna and Lagos states and they have not reached the age of retirement in civil service when they were issued with retirement letters while others got sacked”, Abubakar said.
He lamented that sacking and retiring of their members without payment of their entitlements in good time may force them into hawking and street begging which are currently not allowed in the state while about 60 of the affected persons in 2016 were yet to be paid their entitlements.
Corroborating this development, Abdulhameed Yakubu and Ibrahim Rabiu from Kaduna North and Zaria Local Government areas respectively lamented that, they were retired in 2016 and their entitlements were not paid up to April 2021.
“Between 2016 to date, I had lost both my wife and a daughter due to my inability to pay for blood transfusion of my daughter”, Rabiu lamented.