The
Imo State Government has handed over about thirty Pension Board staff
to the Personnel of Directorate of Security Services (DSS) over
monumental fraud dictated in pension cheques amounting to N650 million
naira.
A statement signed by Sam Onwuemeodo, Chief Press
Secretary to Governor Rochas Okorocha, said the Cheques in question
are 92 with some of them Containing N10 million and above.
"And
most of the fake Cheques were written in the names of people who are
not Pensioners or who do not exist while some are written in the names
of existing Pensioners who then had three Cheques or more but only one
having the actual amount they ought to have as their Pensions while the
fake Cheques in their names have amounts ranging from N10 million and
above"
Meanwhile, the government on Monday, August 28,
2017 began to pay the Pensioners one hundred (100) Percent of their
outstanding Pension arrears with Pensioners from eight Local Governments
including Nkwerre, Ideato South, Njaba, Nwangele, Isu, Obowo, Onuimo
and Orsu being paid that Monday at the Imo International Convention Centre (IICC) Owerri.
The
government decided to pay directly to the Pensioners following the
discovery of the mind-blowing fraud in the Pension Cheques.
Before
now, the governor had raised alarm over the steady rise in Pension
bills in the State on monthly basis with the last bill being N1.59
billion and had done verification upon verification to find out where
the problems lies but all to no avail.
But as God would
have it, after writing the Cheques for the Payment of the outstanding
Pension arrears this time, Okorocha demanded for the whole Cheques
written for that Purpose, and for days, he was personally going through
the Cheques with some trusted aides and the discoveries were shocking.
It
was discovered that one person could have three or four Cheques written
in his or her name and most of the names non-Pensioners and the amounts
in the Cheques all in millions, prompting the governor to summon a
meeting after a preliminary investigation with the key Pension Board
Staff in attendance, and Pensioners from the 8 designated Local
Governments for payment.
Before handing over the
suspected Pension Board Staff to Security agents, the governor said the
blood of pensioners who had died without their Pensions would be on
their heads, revealing that some of the Senior Pension Board Staff
involved have hotels in Owerri, Aba and Delta State, while two of them
have housing estates, and said they would be made to face the full wrath
of the law.
The governor also warned that any government official
found to have a hand in the fraud would also be made to face the music,
adding that he could now have a sigh of relief having discovered the
factor behind the worrisome rise in Pension bills every month
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