21 OSOPADEC retired, dead officers paid N20m gratuities

Akure—THE Ondo State Oil-Producing Areas Development Commission, OSOPADEC, has presented cheques of about N20m as gratuities to families of 21 retired and dead officers of the Commission.

Chairman of the Commission, Hon. Olugbenga Edema gave out the cheques during the end-of-the-year get-together for members of staff and management of the Commission in Akure.

Edema reiterated the desire to have a good and well-motivated workforce that will drive its vision for the mandate area.

He said that “without a good and well-motivated workforce, there is no way we can achieve our goals for this Commission and our mandate area. Without the workforce being motivated, there is hardly much we can achieve.

“We have started with the motivation component of processes, which has culminated into this end-of-the-year get-together.

“We decided to reward those who retired and whose pensions and gratuities were pending.”

The chairman assured the people of Ilaje and Ese-Odo local government areas that the new board will ensure that projects are no longer abandoned.

According to him “there will be no abandoned projects. We have profiled those projects we inherited. Some are sustainable, some are not.

“For those that can be sustained and resuscitated, there is no way we can abandon them. In our budget of 2018, we tried as much as possible to capture many of them.”

The Commission also gave some token to the retired staff, including a former Director, Engineer Taiwo Otun, who has now become a permanent secretary in the state’s Ministry of Works.

He was presented with a refrigerator. Fourteen other beneficiaries got a standing fan each.

The shairman attributed this to the need to appreciate the fact that they worked in OSOPADEC and their efforts duly recognised.

He said: “The essence of all these is to motivate our workforce, to show them that their efforts are being rewarded or seen.”