…Saves N6bn annually
Uche Usim, Abuja
In line with its quest to run a transparent operation, the Pension Transitional Arrangement Directorate (PTAD) on Wednesday disclosed that 41,000 pensioners have been deleted from its payroll.
The figure consists of 22,021 retirees who failed to turn up for verification conducted nationwide by themselves or through their next of kins; and another 19,000 without verifiable Bank Biometric Verification Numbers (BVN).
It added that over 237,000 pensioners were currently on its database, adding that it spends N7.8 billion monthly on pension payment.
The Executive Secretary of PTAD, Sharon Ikeazor, made the revelation at a press briefing in Abuja on the activities of the agency in the last 12 months. According to her, 2017 was a busy year for PTAD as the agency recorded remarkable feats, especially in the area of delisting ‘ghost pensioners’.
“By removing them from our payroll, the Federal Government was saved monthly payment of N495,022,747.57 amounting to approximately N6 billion annually, which would have gone into accounts of unknown persons.
“Under the Civil Service Pension Department (CSPD), PTAD, through the verification exercise, successfully added 7,969 verified civil service pensioners to the payroll. “These are pensioners who were verified in the South West and North Central in Q4 2017. Before this addition, over 19,500 verified civil service pensioners from the North West, South East, North East and South South had been reinstated and paid their arrears. Also ongoing is the computation of benefits for over 5,000 verified civil service pensioners. This will conclude the inclusion of all verified civil service pensioners in the payroll,” Ikeazor explained.
For the Parastatal Pension Department (PaPD), she said the agency added over 700 verified parastatal pensioners from the Federal Housing Authority and NDA (civilians) to the payroll to commence receipt of monthly pension payments.
PTAD commenced the verification of defunct and privatised agencies in fourth-quarter (Q4) of 2017 with the verification of pensioners from National Insurance Corporation of Nigeria (NICON), New Nigeria Newspapers (NNN), NDA (civilians), the Federal Housing Authority and Nigerian-Re.