The Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation has put in place a strategic arrangement to prepare Civil Servants to live a healthy life after retirement from the service.
The Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, Mrs. Winifred Ekanem Oyo-Ita who disclosed this on Monday in Abuja during a press briefing to mark the 2017 Civil Service Week Celebration said that the office decided to come up with the strategic exit plan for retiring Civil Servants because of the realisation that a good number of them retire into destitution because of the insufficient pensions.
She said the programme being developed by the Career Management Office of the Office of the Head of the Civil Service of the Federation would give the retiring Civil Servants the opportunity to acquire entrepreneurial skills which would aid them to make more money in retirement.
The Head of Service who also spoke on the issue of the arrears of pension and promotion in the service said that they had been included in the marshal plan developed by the Minister of Finance Mrs. Kemi Adeosun.
She recalled that the marshal plan had been approved by the Federal Executive Council for funds to be sourced specially to clear all arrears, salaries, promotion arrears and others.
Mrs. Oyo-Ita said: “On the issue of the arrears of pension, this is included in the marshal plan that has been developed by the Minister of Finance and approved by the Federal Executive Council to source for funds specially to clear all these arrears, salaries, promotion arrears and so on. But for the Office of the Head of Service under Goal four of our Strategic Plan is to develop and approve the welfare package of the Civil Servants, it also included preparing Civil Servants for retirement. We discovered that a lot of Civil Servants upon retirement are becoming destitute because the pension really cannot take them till the end of the month. And it is really sad that people who put in all their lives into government are left stranded in their old age. So the Career Management Office is developing a programme for retiring Civil Servants so that Civil Servants are helped in preparing themselves for retirement and having some entrepreneurialskills which they can acquire to help them to earn extra income outside their pension.” She said.
Commenting on the Federal Integrated Staff Housing (FISH) Programme, the Head of Service said that the programme had recorded appreciable level of progress and had signed a N13 billion Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Nigeria Mortgage Financing Company.
According to her, the programme had 1,025 completed houses with 30 of them given out to beneficiaries and was targeting 2,200 houses by 2019.
She explained that only 30 of the beneficiaries had been able to get their houses because many of the Civil Servants who applied under the programme applied for houses beyond what they could afford. “Many Civil Servants upon registering for the FISH Programme were not quite clear about the issue of their affordability index and people were applying for houses that are beyond their affordability index, we got this through the profiling”, she said.
SIGNED
Mohammed Manga
Assistant Director (Media Relations)
For: Head of the Civil Service of the Federation
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