I welcome you to the symbolic presentation of cheques to retirees who finished the processing of their retirement papers in 2013. In total, 82 of these retirees will be paid their full retirement benefits.
Seven years is a long time for anyone who put in work to wait to get paid their benefits. Such payments should ideally come immediately on retirement. It is indeed disheartening that the previous administration did not do what they should, when they should.
Oyo State had a backlog of Twenty-Six Billion (N26bn) Naira in unpaid gratuities for 6,274 pensioners in the state, when we assumed office in May 2019. This is an alarming figure, but we are making efforts to offset this debt.
When a child inherits fortunes from his father, he will not reject it. In the same way if he inherits debts, he is duty bound to do something about it.
This administration remains committed to finishing whatever previous administrations left undone. And that includes payments of this nature.
As I said during my one year in office broadcast, we have paid more in gratuities and entitlements in one year than the previous administration did in eight years. This was possible because we increased the monthly allocation for gratuities from One Hundred Million Naira (N100M) to One Hundred and Eighty Million Naira (N180M) with effect from June, 2019. What this means is that we have committed One Billion, Nine Hundred and Eighty Million Naira to this payment in the past one year with a total number of Eight Hundred and Eighty-Six (886) retired core Civil Servants; Hospital workers; Teaching and Non-teaching staff benefitting.
We have also cleared the backlog of this arrears from the year 2012 to April, 2013.
I assure you that we will keep paying off these debts and I know we will finish paying it. We remain determined to ensure that every person in Oyo State feels the impact of governance.
It is, therefore, my honour to officially present these symbolic cheques to beneficiaries who finished the processing of their retirement papers in 2013.