Dozens of former staff of the defunct Power Holding Company of Nigeria has protested non-payment of their housing allowance totaling about N400m by Ibadan Electricity Distribution Company.
The money, according to them, was their bulk housing allowance deducted from their salaries in the year 2013 before their final disengagement.
With placards bearing different inscriptions such as “President Jonathan, please help us locate where our money is hanging”; “Hey! There is God o o o”; “why delay payment of our housing allowances since 2013”? and many others, the aggrieved ex-staff of the company stormed the secretariat of the Oyo State Correspondents at Mokola, Ibadan.
Addressing the media, their spokespersons, Oyedele Edna Owesiri, Julius Adeleke Taiwo, Adesina Olayinka described as unusual, the delay in the payment of the allowance.
This, they said was because some of their colleagues had been paid while their own payment was being unduly delayed and they wondered why?
The aggrieved workers clarified that the money had been paid to batches one to ten but for reasons best known to those concerned, they have refused to pay batches 11 and 12.
While pleading with President Goodluck Jonathan to look into their plight, the visibly angry former workers of PHCN lamented that some of them had died waiting for the money.
They were disengaged during the privatization of the power sector which informed the changing the name from PHCN to Ibadan Electricity Distribution Company.
Those affected, they explained, spread across Ogun, Kwara, part of Kogi, Osun, Oyo, and others, all these, they said were under Ibadan zone before the privatization.
They specifically asked the National Electricity Liability Management Company, a body set up by the Federal Government to see to all liabilities that the government incurred during the privatization exercise.
