Pensioners, who retired from the Local Government Service of Anambra State from 2015 to 2019, yesterday, held a prayer session to mourn four of their colleagues, who allegedly died as a result of their unpaid benefits.
The prayer session was to seek God’s intervention to avert more deaths and to survive what they described as the inhuman conditions and intimidation meted on them by government officials, whom they blamed for non-payment of their gratuities of over N850 million.
At the prayer session in Awka, the chairman of the group, Raphael Okoye, claimed the four pensioners died because they could not afford to pay their medical bills.
Displaying placards with various inscriptions, they called on Governor Chukwuma Soludo to rescue them, informing him that there were people in government undermining his administration by deliberately sitting on their pensions and gratuities from 2015 to date.
Okoye alleged that key officials of the state Ministry of Local Government and the Joint Accounts Allocation Committee, have deliberately refused to pay the health pensioners their arrears of entitlement despite court judgment on the matter.
A document made available to reporters read: “The consent judgment ordered the payment of the health pensioners’ accumulated arrears in four installments starting from May 2023 and ending in August 2023.
