by Fidelis Soriwei.
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Vice-President of the National Union of Electricity Workers Employees, Mr. Etete Ntukuben, on Friday, called for a probe, not just of the PHCN superannuation account, but the entire account of the PHCN.
Ntukuben said that investigators should be brought in to take a critical look at the withdrawals by the Minister of Power from the account of the PHCN.
“Let us have a holistic look at the PHCN account apart from the pension account; we should take a look at the minister’s withdrawals. A lot of millions of naira have been withdrawn and given to soldiers and policemen in the guise of security maintenance.
“They must pay us according to the conditions of service of the industry, according to the terms of the contract we have with the government,” Ntukuben said.
The minister had invited the Civil Society Movement to conduct a probe into the superannuation account of the PHCN as a result of the fact that only N3bn was found in the account.
The minister said that the amount was too small compared to the claim by the electricity workers that an equivalent of 25 per cent of the salaries of 250,000 workers were paid into the account by the government, which should add up to N300bn.
But Ntukuben faulted the minister’s claim, describing it as a ploy to evade the payment of the PHCN workers.
The union leader explained that the Federal Government had not been remitting 25 per cent of the salaries of workers into the superannuation account “for quite some time now.”
According to him, the government stopped remitting the money into the account when power generation dropped sharply in the country with the management of the PHCN struggling to pay the salaries of workers.
He argued that if the management of the PHCN breached the terms of service of the workers by failing to remit the said amount into the superannuation account, the FG, which is considered to be the principal of the PHCN management, must be held liable.
Ntukuben said that the FG had a responsibility to ensure the payment of the gratuity and pension of the workers and indeed the exit packages of all PHCN workers, who were being disengaged from service into firms owned by private individuals.
He said the issue of the funds was being brought to the fore because of the decision of the FG to send away the entire workforce of the PHCN at the same time.
He insisted that it was the responsibility of the FG to implement its terms of agreement with the PHCN workers, which provided for the payment of gratuity to a worker who had put in five years and gratuity and pension to those with 10 years of service and above.
He said, “We had a superannuation fund that is supposed to be funded by the FG; it was arranged to take care of 25 per cent of our salaries.
“Management is supposed to remit the money into the fund. For some time, when they stopped funding the sector, power generation dropped and management was struggling to pay salaries and they were not remitting pension.
“Look, management of PHCN are agents of the FG; so, if they breached the superannuation funds, their principal would be held liable.
“It is the responsibility of the government to provide our exit package. Up till June 30 this year, those who retired and were qualified for gratuity and pension had not been paid their entitlements.
Nnaji had written the leading civil society organisations in the country to investigate the disappearance of the superannuation fund contributed from the internally-generated revenue of the PHCN.
“If the PHCN’s 50,000 employees have over the years been contributing 25 per cent of their salaries to the pension fund as alleged by the National Union of Electricity Employees, they should have over N300bn in their bank account.
“What we have rather found is a paltry N3bn, which cannot cover the terminal benefits of up to 30 per cent of the workforce,” Nnaji was quoted to have said in his letter to the civil society organisations on Monday.
The civil society groups invited to scrutinise the PHCN pension funds include the Save Nigeria Group under the leadership of Pastor Tunde Bakare, the Transition Monitoring Group of Moshood Erubayi and Dr. Joe Okei-Odumakin’s Institute of Human Rights and Democratic Studies.
It was, however, gathered on Friday that even the N3bn which the minister referred to as the total sum in the pension account was actually a deficit.
An investigation showed that the FG was said to be making moves to ensure that the PHCN workers got their severance benefits.
However, the government has plans to pay the workers the equivalent of 25 per cent of their salaries to 2004 after which the stipulation of the 2004 Pensions Act would be applied.
It was gathered that the FG would not pay the full 15 per cent as the workers did not meet their required contribution to the contributory pension fund.
A look at the Pension Fund Trust Deed showed that the non-contributory fund was managed by a seven-man committee of trustees comprising members of the management of the PHCN and the leadership of the electricity unions.
The members, as stated in the Trustee Deed, are the Executive Director Finance and Administration, GM, Human Resources Management, GM, Sec/Legal Adviser, Assistant GM Industrial Relations, representatives of Senior Staff Association of Electricity Workers, representatives of the National Union of Electricity Employees, representatives of pensioners of the National Electric Power Authority (now PHCN).
According to the Deed, the committee has the powers to administer and manage the fund.
However, when our correspondent contacted the Special Adviser to the Minister of Power on Media, Mr. C-Don Adinuba, he described the union’s allegations as baseless and lacking in truth and morality.
He said that the workers were coming up with allegations against the minister because of their quest to prevent the FG from looking into the administration of the PHCN Staff Pension Fund.
He accused the leadership of the electricity workers of complicity in the diversion of huge amount of the pension funds meant for PHCN workers.
Adinuba said that the committee set up by the minister to look into the issue of the PHCN pension under the leadership of a former Auditor-General of the Federation, Mr. Joseph Ajiboye, was expected to come up with revelations that would shock Nigerians especially the workforce of the PHCN, who he said was being fed with lies by the unionists.
The minister’s aide said that leaders of unions in the electricity sector opened a secret account in 2005, which they used in diverting huge amount of funds through a secretly registered firm.
He said that if the workers were acting in consonance with the principle of accountability, probity and morality, they wouldn’t have expressed concern about the invitation to civil society bodies with personalities like Bakare, Sani, Pat Utomi and others who could not be described as loyalists of the government.
Adinuba accused the union leaders in the electricity sector of deliberately deceiving the workers and the public through misinformation.
He said, “Of course we shall be glad for investigators to look into the PHCN account. I think they are making these allegations because they want to stop the government from getting to the root of the administration of the PHCN pension scheme.
“These people secretly registered a company in 2005 and diverted PHCN pension fund to the account of the company.
“Well, the minister has set up a panel headed by a former Auditor-General of the Federation, Mr. Joseph Ajiboye.
“I believe that this panel will open a can of worms including the secret registration of this firm and the operations of the secret account.”
According to him, the management of the PHCN is setting aside the sum of N3.5bn in the pension fund to pay the entitlements of those leaving the firm every year.
He said the surplus, running into hundreds of millions of naira after the annual payment of about 100 retiring workers, was diverted into the secret account operated by the union leaders.
On the issue of the withdrawals made by the minister from the PHCN account for the purpose of security maintenance, Adenuba said that it was only irrational and unpatriotic people that would call on the FG to withdraw soldiers from multi-billion naira facilities of the PHCN amid the insecurity in the society.
He said that the arrangement where N3.5bn was set aside for the payment of exit benefits could not work in view of the privatisation of 17 out of the 18 PHCN subsidiary companies with a total of 40,000 workers.
He added that N43bn set aside for the payment of the exit package of the workers was inadequate.
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