By Chuks NZEH
Pensioners in Nigeria under the aegis of Federal Contributory Schemes Pensioners, FCSP, have accused the Nigeria Union of Pensioners, NUP, of operating outside its constitution by not remitting 55percent of check off dues to them.
The chairman of FCSP, Comrade Omezi Sunday, made this known recently in Abuja where he noted that several attempts to correct the anomaly has not yielded the desired result, while calling on the Minister of Labour Sen. Chris Ngige, to intervene.
He noted, “we have issue with check-off dues because NUP is shortchanging us by not giving us our rightful entitlements. This, we have long reported to our regulatory body, being the Federal Ministry of Labour.
”NUP is not going through her constitution. The operations of NUP are contrary to the constitution and we dragged them before the Federal Ministry of Labour
“They are supposed to remit 55 percent of the check-off dues to us, take 35 percent and give Nigeria Labour Congress 10 percent which is altogether 100 percent.
“The NUP collects our money directly from PTAD and then give us whatever they like and our complaints to PTAD to stop this has not yielded any positive result as PTAD said it doesn’t want to dabble into labour issue, saying it is the duty of the Federal Ministry of Labour to resolve our problem and the ministry is still conciliating.
“It directed us to go back and settle ourselves as according to it, it’s an internal issue adding that if we can’t do that we should come back.
”We held a meeting with the ministry on November 22 and the meeting ended in a deadlock so we have reported back to the ministry, waiting for its action.
“We want the Ministry to refer us to Industrial Arbitration Panel if they cannot solve the problem. If the Federal Ministry of Labour feels that we cannot work in harmony with the NUP, then they should refer us because we have all it takes to pull out, we are a federal union.”
