By EDISON Okereke
The Imo State Chapter of the Nigeria Security & Civil Defence Corps Union of Pensioners, at the weekend, called on the Federal Government, to extend the National Health Insurance Care the members enjoy in service to their retirement.
The members made the call in an interview with journalists on the occasion of the Pensioners’ Day, at the Senior Citizens Centre, Owerri, the Imo State capital.
Fielding questions from the newsmen, the retired paramilitary men said, “You see when we were in service we enjoyed free medical care by way of National Health Insurance Care. We were entitled to it with four members of each of our families, free of charge in any hospital of our choices.
The Public Relations Officer, Mr Emma Nwaneri personally noted, This is my sixth or seventh year in retirement. If I have a headache now, I buy drugs. If I go to hospital now, I pay unlike when I was in service.
What Im trying to say is that Im looking for a situation in which the government can say: retirees, at least, for the sake of your age and so on, enjoy free medicare because I know we have felt the pulse of those who served outside Nigeria. Once they are retired, their medicare keeps going until they leave this world.
Nwaneri who said he got retired while serving in Edo State, nevertheless, expressed optimism over Nigerian Union of Pensioners effort toward solving the problem.
If you have left the service does not mean that you are no longer a human being; the institution where you served your country when others would be sleeping you would be outside guarding them. Those who missed in action, where are they now?
I retired in Edo State. You can now see what it means leaving your place and going to a strange land. Thats what we are looking forward to, for government to do for us.
Re-establishing National Health Insurance Scheme for the retirees will go a long way to helping our longevity, Nwaneri stated.
He however commended NUP, Imo State Council Clinic, where they go to every Wednesday for free medicare.
The chairman of the union, Chief Paul Brown Ikwuegbu, explained that the Pensioners Day is in the form of remembrance which comes up on every October 17, but was delayed because of logistics, adding that the celebration makes them feel happy.
Ikwuegbu who was a soldier and part of the contingent in ECOMOG to Liberia, said he joined NCSDC in retirement, urged the Federal Government to give them what is due them.
We want Government to give us our needs. They are owing us, he quipped.
The 81-year-old man who retired as a Chief Superintendent of Civil Defence, decried the situation of the pensioners of the corps in Nigeria.
They chorused that the Federal Government is not taking care of them in retirement.
The retirees are not in their programme. Whatever our problems, are not their business. Earlier in his speech on the occasion, Chief Ikwuegbu made a number of demands on the Federal Government, NSCDC, and NUP, to include: “Payment of the ₦32,000 pension increase, by the Federal Government; payment of the ₦25,000 Federal Government palliative; provision of a one-room accommodation at the Imo State Command Headquarters of NSCDC for a liaison office; payment of promotion arrears; payment of disengagement allowances, among others, adding, By the grace of God, we are looking forward to initiating a Health/Welfare Trust Fund through which we hope to assist our sick members.
The Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) is a paramilitary agency in Nigeria, established in 1967 and formally recognized by an Act of Parliament in 2003.
