Governor Willie
Obiano of Anambra State at the weekend paid off the remaining part of pensions to local government workers including teachers numbering over 600.
Obiano who performed the ceremony at Governor’s Lodge, Amawbia, said last Friday that the total amount of N946,571,926.46 being paid represented  arrears of pension and gratuity from January to date.
He said henceforth he would no longer make show of such payments as he would now pay pensioners monthly so that it does not accumulate.
He said he believed in the slogan that “the labours of our heroes past shall never be in vain” and thanked the retirees for putting in their efforts to see that the state forged ahead.
He also thanked the former Governor of Anambra State, Chief Peter Obi, whom he said, worked so hard to pay the pensioners up to date.
Earlier, the Commissioner for Local Government, Mrs. Azuka Enemuo, said the nearly N1billion the government paid to pensioners last Friday would bring the figure paid to retired workers in the past eight years to about N42 billion.
“What we are doing today,” he said, “is the completion of mop up of gratuities inherited by the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) government since 1992. So far, the state has spent about N40 billion and we are beginning a new phase. This new phase is such that once your gratuity papers are processed, you are paid,” she explained.
It would be recalled that most retired civil servants were not paid their pensions and gratuities before Governor Obi came into office. Instead, such retired workers were described as dead woods by the first civilian Governor of Anambra State in the Third Republic.