HOPELESSNESS OF IMO PENSIONERS

~ He is inconsistent and trust deficient
~ As usual his pronouncements on 40% minimum wage and gratuity payments to workers and pensioners have turned illusive

Imo workers and pensioners, again have been ridiculed by Uzodinma and his 3R group of scammers. The faithless and inhuman administration has unscrupulously made a mincemeat of our revered senior citizens and the totality of the state government workforce.

It is unfortunate that when most progressive states particularly in the Southeast, are busy building capacity and restructuring their workforce in line with global best practice, the 3R administration in the state is rather playing pranks and toying with the sensibility of the people. Uzodinma has cheapened and made lmo workers and pensioners hungry and beggarly.

If one may ask, how really have lmo senior citizens offended the state governor? Right from day one of this government, workers and pensioners have been the prime target of the Senator Uzodinma. They have suffered great deprivations and humiliations in his hands.

As soon as he was sworn into office on the 15th of January, 2020, his first port of call was the public service. Soon after his kangaro verification exercises, he descended on lmo workers and indeed peppered them. Most of his victims from the exercise have not received salaries till date. Yet they go to work and perform their duties diligently. They have not been officially disengaged but their names have been delisted from the workers payroll. Reason according to him, is that they are ghost workers.

The same fate is suffered by the pensioners. These aged and frail looking senior citizens of the state, who spent their youthful energies in contributing to the development of the state, have passed through hell in the hands of Uzodinma and his contrived shared prosperity administration. Most of them still do not have their names on the payment vouchers of pensioners. These have also been tagged ghost pensioners.

It could be recalled that earlier in 2020, lmo pensioners who peacefully were protesting the exclusion of their names in the payment vouchers were physically and brutally assaulted by trashing and dragging on the streets of Owerri by some state sponsored thugs. The sight was woeful. Men and women at their late seventies and eighties were flogged with fulani canes like cows and donkeys. It was really a sorry sight.

Uzodinma, sorry to say, is pathologically inconsistent and trust deficient. His words at dawn are not same at dusk. In one of his stakeholders fora in the last quarter of 2022, he rang it even into the ears of the deaf that he will be clearing the arrears of gratuity owed lmo retirees. Of course, to some of the experienced senior citizens, the statement was seen yet as one of those gimmicks the cock will play to the hen when it is in need. They received the news with pinch of salt, knowing that it is one of the strategies for the elections.

Not withstanding the series of woeful experience they had in the past, the pensioners decided to give it a chance. Still they were dribbled, forced to run helter-skelter, spending money to copy and photocopy piles of document, necessary and unnecessary, just to give an erroneous picture that something is happening. Physically fragile and sickly old men and women were forced on the road, some of them on wheelchairs, coming all the way from distant Okigwe and Ideato in Orlu zone.

To further strangulate them, the pensioners were subjected to a number of unnecessarily stressful trips. At one time they are made to take their documents to the pension house on Orlu road, at another it was to the Accountant Generals office, yet at another, they were directed to the office of the Head of Service. At one time they will ask for one document, at the other they will call for another. These were all ploys to ensure that they adequately stress and strain the already weary pensioners.

About the 24th of July, information came from government, directing all state pensioners to go to the office of the Head of Service on the 2nd of August and look up their names for the payment of gratuities. Can you imagine what, pensioners trooped out from far and near, in their numbers and besieged the office of the HOS. Alas, it was another April fool day. Even officers of the office of the HOS were embarrassed and feigned ignorance of the announcement. Government on its part, has not made any clarification about the failed display of names.

This is the lastest about Uzodinma, Imo pensioners and payment of gratuity. When a man is brazenly as inconsistent as the governor, he should not be taken seriously. Leadership is not about guymanism, it is a serious business that deserves serious mindedness.

On saturday, 15th July, 2023, in what he tagged a stakeholders meeting at the Rockview Hotel, Owerri, Senator Hope Uzodinma in his boisterous nature, announced according to him, a fuel subsidy palliative package of N40,000 minimum wage for lmo state workers. The very few gullible ones, jumped at it and sang halleluya songs. But the generality of the workers knew it was business as usual, another scam. They chose to feel flat and indifferent about it. While his contrived faction of the NLC were busy orchestrating and hyping the news, the workers were more like waiting to see before believing.

To make it look real, the governor announced that the package will take effect from the month of July. Lo and behold, July salaries have been paid and what they did was to add to each workers salary, paltry sums, ranging between N800 and N1000, as 40% of their monthly salaries. What else can be more dubious than this?

Well, the workers have received the salaries but the impression are there. At the fullness of time, they will count.

Ndiimo are wiser and cannot be fooled again. Soon the campaigns will commence and lot of sweet talks will flood the media space, some of them, imaginary and others quite real.

Yes, we know that there are some of the candidates who do not believe in campaigns. It is known that they have never canvassed for votes. They strongly believe in their benjohnson way and depend on Nigeria judiciary. Let us see how far these can take them.

Meanwhile, lmo workers and pensioners have dipped their chaplets in water, praying fervently for SamJones combination. It is the only saving grace for the Ndiimo. SamJones combination will make lmo safe again and rejig our economy to provide the needed jobs and improve on the standard of living of workers and the generality of lmolites.

Corruption