‘We are dying’: NPA ex-workers plead for payment of entitlements

Twenty-five years after their appointments were terminated by the management of Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA), the affected workers have urged President Muhammadu Buhari to compel the NPA management to pay their pension, gratuity and redundancy benefits.

The workers, in a letter to the president, a copy of which was made available to The Guardian yesterday, lamented the death of their members as a result of non-payment of their pension and other entitlement despite a Supreme Court ruling.

In the letter signed by Sylvas Okoro, an engineer, the NPA 1991 retirees, said NPA did not honour the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on the final settlement of our benefits dated 23rd April, 2013, which was coordinated by the federal Ministry of Justice between the NPA and representatives of the 1991 retrenched employees.

According to them, they were constrained to write the letter to the president by the refusal of the management to honour the agreement reached.

They said: “On June 10, 1991, about 3,000 employees from all the ports in Nigeria were served with letter of termination of appointment by NPA’s management without payment of our pensions, gratuity and redundancy benefits as stipulated in the Federal Government circular NoB321/SI/X/618 dated January 1, 1991 on Pension and Gratuity and Pension Amendment Act of 1990.”