Logpobiri Anaiya
The disengaged staff of power holding company of Nigeria (PHCN) has blamed National Union of electricity, employee (NUEE) for betraying its members across the country for non-payment of their benefits.
The aggrieved staff has urged president Buhari to toe the path of honour and investigate the complicity in the non-payment of its members since their disengagement from active service.
The chairman Engineer Lucas Hamidu made the plea while addressing newsmen in Bauchi, he said, several disengaged PHCN staff has died in poverty waiting their benefits.
Hamidu had also faulted the past administration for introducing Privatization even when it did not articulate the negative impact on the nation socio-economic and political development.
The chairman regretted that FG in collaboration with NUEE didn’t properly worked out plans before PHCN was finally taken over by the current management and that marked the lamentation of the aggrieved staff.
” It’s a catastrophe to note that PHCN pensioners now collect only N4000 per month instead of the N80, 000 and this has forced their children out of school with the others checkout of the rented apartment and yet FG and electricity management appears not to address the ugly trend,” Lucas stated.
Similarly, the aggrieved staff had submitted a memorandum in respect of their benefits to the senate adhoc committee on power in October, 2015 drawing attention to their grievances yet nothing has yielded positive result.
Among its prayers are non-payment of staff gratuity, refusal to release 10 per cent equity shareholding, non-payment of bulk claims, unpaid pension deductions among others.
They also urged the President not to delay in investigating the circumstance attributed to the travails of its members nationwide apparently to rekindle the past glory of the so-called privatization.
It decried the alarming increment in electricity tariff even when Nigeria’s sources of energy are not imported, a situation it described as cheating to the subscribers.
Lucas therefore cautioned the management of the electricity in the country to be above board and settle the entitlements of the disengaged PHCN staff.
