A youth group, the All Progressives Congress Young Entrepreneurs (AYE) has charged the Abia state government to as a matter of urgency and obligation pay retired civil servants their pensions and arrears of over eighteen months.
The group also made the same charge about parastatals, state and local governments staffs whom are been also owed upto nine months in arrears too.
In a press release, in Umuahia, the Abia State capital and signed by the group’s acting publicity secretary Comrade Tony Chuku the group wondered why an oil producing state with a high commercial area like Aba would be owing the salaries of its workers while neighbouring non-oil producing states pay as at when due.
Stating it as the worse injustice and insensitivity to be meted on pensioners and workers who spend their active years working for the betterment of the state but at the end of the day denied of their well deserved wages.
The group wondered why Governor Ikpeazu who gets one billion naira monthly as security vote and impress to run government house would be finding it hard to pay workers and pensioners with even contractors owed for jobs executed.
The group also wondered why the governor would appoint more than one thousand aides whom mostly have not specific duty assigned to them for the betterment of the state but employed just for the sake for the governor’s re-election bid.
The group called on the federal government and the EFCC to probe why after all the bailout funds and Paris club refund the state is still highly indebted to it pensioners, civil servants and contractors.