Imo Pensioners Threatened With Compulsory Healthcare Insurance Scheme.

No Register, No Pension, No Gratuity.

Pensioners in Imo State are undergoing another round of excruciating verification exercise under the guise of IMO STATE AND LOCAL PENSIONERS HEALTHCARE INSURANCE PROGRAMME.

For close to three weeks now branch Chairmen of various chapters of the Nigerian Union Pensioners have been forcing their members to go get enrolled with a threat of ” if you are not captured, no more payment of pension or gratuity” as none enrollees would be assumed to be ghost pensioners.

Since this development, some pensioners who spoke with Trumpeta, on condition of anonymity, queried what they stand to gain from the said scheme. Some wondered why the scheme never came during their active work days.

Some questioned how much that would be deducted from their meagre monthly take home to service the scheme.

While doubting the authenticity of this enrollment, the pensioners appealed to the Commissioner for Information, Hon Emelumba, to make a statement as to why the state government should tag seizure of their pension and gratuity to the Insurance scheme.

When this Reporter called at the Office of the Head of Service, she was not on seat but an insider who wouldn’t want the name in print, hinted that already the Head of Service had registered her displeasure why the NUP State Exco should tie the enrollment to pension/gratuity payment and even asked to go and recant.

A government source told Trumpeta that the healthcare Insurance programme was an outcome of a proposal made by a company and was approved adding that making it mandatory for pensioners to register was a bargain between the Insurance Company and NUP.

According to him, the government has no hand on the registration just as it has nothing to do with pension payment.

Before the enrollment kicked off in Owerri last Tuesday, the officials of the Healthcare Insurance scheme told the attendees point blank that the registration had nothing to do with their pension and therefore not mandatory.