The Chairman, Kano State Pension Fund Trustees, Sani Dawaki Gabasawa, says the state government owes its retired workers over N20 billion gratuities.
Gabasawa revealed this to newsmen on Thursday in Kano, while reacting to some allegations against him.
He added that the pension trustees had not been able to pay gratuities to retirees since 2016.
According to him, the situation has accumulated the backlog to the tune of N20 billion for over 31,000 retirees awaiting their payment.
He also attributed the backlog of the gratuities to the failure of some government organisations to remit their monthly eight per cent pension contribution to the trustees, while some agencies could not remit the money fully.
The chairman noted that due to failure of some organisations to remit the eight per cent, the pension trustees owed them the sum of N28 billion.
“As I am talking to you, we pay N1.2 billion pension to retirees every month. Every month the pension increases.
“We are in a difficult situation. Let me tell you that there must be delay in the payment of gratuities in this state. This is because the state has not paid gratuities since 2016 due to lack of funds.
Gabasawa however expressed hope that the state government would soon continue to pay gratuities to the retirees as the state Governor, Abdullahi Ganduje had formed a committee to ratify all discrepancies in a bid to continue disbursement of the retired workers’ entitlements.
He denied allegations that he engaged in negotiation with retirees to pay certain percentage out of their entitlements before they were paid their gratuities.
Gabasawa also described as blatant lies, the allegations that he appointed his children in key positions at the pension trustees and that he used them to serve as frontiers of his alleged shady deals.
