Tuesday, 9 July 2013
Pensioners shut Unity Bank over N4.3bn severance package
Banking activities on Monday came to a halt at Unity Bank Plc in Abuja following protests by pensioners of the defunct Bank of the North over their unpaid N4.3bn severance package.
The protesters shut the gate of the bank for several hours and prevented workers and customers from gaining access into the premises.
The action, which took both the employees and customers of the bank by surprise, was to protest the alleged refusal of the bank to pay the severance package of about 4,000 former employees of Bank of the North.
Speaking in an interview with journalists during the protest, the Secretary General, Association of Senior Staff of Banks, Insurance and Financial Institutions, Mr. Obukese Orere, said the pensioners decided to picket Unity Bank since all options to make the management pay the workers’ entitlements had failed.
For instance, he said despite directives by the Central Bank of Nigeria, Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation and Industrial Arbitration Panel asking the bank to pay the severance package, it had failed to do so.
Orere said, “This issue started when Prof. Chuckwuma Soludo brought the issue of reducing banks from 89 to 10; we voluntarily retired so that Bank of the North would be strong enough to go into Unity Bank, and they promised to pay all our entitlements.
“They paid some and left some. Then we started asking them why have not paid the other but they said no that somebody signed off our rights.
“We told them we have left the bank and nobody could sign off our rights. So, we went to the Industrial Arbitration Panel and won the case. We also took the matter to the CBN and NDIC, and initially, they (Unity Bank) said they won’t pay, but NDIC investigated the books and saw where Bank of the North money of about N5.66bn was kept in a suspense account to pay pensioners of Bank of the North.”
He alleged that Unity Bank discovered the money and started pilfering it until it was finished.
Orere added, “NDIC wrote to them asking them to use the money to pay pensioners so that there would be peace in the bank, but Unity Bank still insisted they were not owing us.
“So, we took the matter again to National Assembly, CBN, NDIC and the Ministry of Labour, and everybody agreed that Unity Bank owed us, and at the end, they finally agreed they owed us.”
He lamented that the bank had ignored pensioners, noting that all letters written to Unity Bank since May last year were not replied.
He said, “After doing a harmonised calculation in May last year, we signed it and sent the figure to the CBN and CBN asked them to look for money and pay us to avoid negative publicity.
“NDIC wrote to them that the N5.66bn should be used to pay us. We are not even asking for the whole money to be paid to us, the total amount they owed us is N4.3bn, but we are asking for the first tranche, which is N1.7bn.”
But reacting to the protest, Unity Bank said in a statement that the agreement reached with the disengaged workers during the merger in 2006 was that their liabilities would be paid by the owners of the defunct Bank of the North, which are the governments of the 19 northern states, and not Unity Bank Plc.
It said, “Several other staff members of other banks that were involved in mergers also accepted cuts from their former employers, some not even as much as 50 per cent, including some of the other legacy banks that formed Unity Bank, but the Bank of the North staff, after being paid the 50 per cent, reneged and came back later, saying they were no longer agreeable to the first agreement and wanted the balance of 50 per cent
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