Abia govt confirms receipt of N10.6bn Paris Club refund

Abia State Govern­ment has confirmed receiving N10.6 bil­lion from the Feder­al Government, being the state’s share of the Paris Club refund.

Commissioner of Finance, Mr. Obinna Oriaku who con­firmed this in an interview with our Correspondent in Umuahia said the 14- day ultimatum giv­en to the state government by the organised labour to defray the arrears of salary and pensions was unnecessary.

According to him, the Gov­ernor had already directed that half of the money be used to pay the backlog of salary and pension arrears of workers and retirees, hence the threat by the workers was uncalled for.

Abia workers had Thursday evening, issued a 14-day ultima­tum to Gov. Okezie Ikpeazu to clear their salary arrears with the largesse or incur their wrath.

The organized labour also mandated the governor to use the largess to defray the backlog of gratuities of retirees, claiming that no pensioner in the state was paid gratuities in the last 16 years.
Chairman of Nigeria La­bour Congress (NLC), Comrade Uchenna Obigwe who gave the ultimatum on behalf of the work­ers urged the governor to quick­ly inaugurate a committee com­prising the organized labour and other stakeholder to discuss mo­dalities for disbursing the largess.
The NLC boss decried the condition of workers and pen­sioners in the state describing their situation as very pathetic.

Accusing NLC of playing politics with the threat, the Com­missioner said he had personal­ly called the NLC boss to inform him of the fund, adding that he had also told him that by Mon­day December 19 the stakehold­ers would be meeting on modal­ities to disburse the funds.
He wondered why Obigwe would be behaving as if he just discovered about the funds when he was rather acting on a privi­leged information.

Oriaku said that despite a directive by the Federal Gov­ernment to pay workers salary with the funds, Gov. Ikpeazu on his own had already made up his mind to accommodate workers’ interest with the largess.

Authority