By Tony Obiechina, ABUJA
The Federal Government will take the verification and payment of former workers of the defunct Nigeria Airways Limited (NAL) in Diaspora to London, United Kingdom.
The two weeks exercise which will be conducted by an Inter-Ministerial Team begins on Monday at the Nigerian High Commission Complex in London, United Kingdom.
The Inter-Ministerial Team will be coordinated by the Presidential Initiative on Continuous Audit (PICA) under the Federal Ministry of Finance, comprises the Independent Corrupt Practices and other Related Offenses Commission (ICPC), Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Auditor General Office, Accountant General Office, Federal Ministry of Finance, and others.
This was confirmed in a statement by the Acting Director of PICA, Mr John Waitono, in Abuja on Sunday. Waitono will be leading the team on behalf of the Permanent Secretary, Special Duties, Federal Ministry of Finance, Dr Mohammad Kyari Dikwa during the exercise.
Federal Government approved the conduct of the exercise for those in Diaspora in London, England due to the role the city of London played as the European Operational Office of the defunct NAL.
According to the statement, “the essence of the exercise is to alleviate the hardship of being experienced for more than a decade while waiting for the benefits and to save them from the stress and financial burden of traveling to the country for the exercise including other logistics to come for their Nigeria for their entitlements”.
It would be recalled that similar exercises had taken place in Kano, Lagos and Enugu centres to attend to the over 6, 000 ex-workers of NAL, following the approval of N22.6 billion by President Muhammadu Buhari, for the payment of their entitlements.
The Federal Government had paid the first 50 per cent of the entitlements to the ex-workers who had completed their verification exercise in October 2018.
The president had approved and directed that the verification and payment of the ex-staff in Diaspora be done in London to save them the cost and stress of traveling down to Nigeria.
