Pa Nwora Eusebius, 92, last worked in the cabinet office of old Anambra State, from where he retired in 1985. He has since then been receiving his pension or retirement fund. But there are millions of other retirees whose monthly pensions, for one reason or the other, are either not paid or paid haphazardly.
Some retirees have even had their names completely removed from the pension payment voucher while some people receive monthly pensions, but are far from being genuine pensioners. Worse still, huge sums of pension funds have reportedly been looted by those saddled with the job of managing the fund, without scruples.
It was in a bid to correct these anomalies as well as streamline the payment of pensions and gratuities to retired civil servants that the Pension Transitional Arrangement Directorate (PTAD) was in August 2013, established by former President Goodluck Jonathan.
Following her appointment, the Director-general of PTAD, Nellie Mayshak, together with members of her team, decided that having a register of authentic pensioners in the country was the first step if they would deliver on their mandate. The directorate consequently, embarked on a country-wide verification exercise to identify genuine pensioners.
“We have already done Kano, Jigawa, Sokoto, Kebbi, Zamfara and Kaduna states,” Mayshak told LEADERSHIP Sunday when the verification team was in the South-East geo-political zone to conduct the exercise which ended in the zone two weeks ago.
Despite his age and health challenges, 92-year-old Pa Eusebius was among hundreds of pensioners in Enugu State who thronged the Enugu Sub-Treasury Pensions Hall, State Secretariat complex to undergo the verification exercise.
“I want to see things for myself, not minding my age and state of health”, said Eusebius, who was wheeled into the verification centre in a chair.
Pa Eusebius said the exercise was free of the pains and tears that characterised previous exercises.
LEADERSHIP Sunday recalls that during similar exercises in the past, some pensioners collapsed and some even died due to exhaustion from standing in the scorching sun for several hours without being attended to.
In addition to biometric capturing of the pensioners, each of them was also expected to present originals and photocopies of their letters of first appointment, confirmation of appointment, last promotion, birth certificate, letter of retirement approved by a competent authority and coloured passport photographs, among other relevant documents,
Like Eusebius, Pa Obeta Nwiyi, 84, a native of Ibagwa Ani, in Nsukka local government area of Enugu state, praised PTAD for conducting a stress-free exercise. Nwiyi who retired in 1988, is now blind but insisted on coming to the centre to participate in the verification exercise, according to his relation who simply gave his name as Matthew,.
“We had planned to send our mobile verification unit to the homes of physically challenged pensioners as well as pensioners on hospital beds to verify them,” said the director-general, while commenting on the presence of some physically challenged pensioners at the centre.
And for the several days that the exercise lasted in Enugu, the pensioners were provided with comfortable seats, drinking water and food. The same treatment was replicated in the other four South-East states of Anambra, Ebonyi, Imo, and Abia where the exercise also took place.
“One of the problems that the federal government has had in the past is the looting of pension funds; and all of that we are fixing to make sure that pension is sustainable, and that pensioners get their due every month,” said Mayshak in an interview with LEADERSHIP Sunday.
According to her, “this verification is a major exercise for us to create a database that is credible, authentic and has names of only pensioners in it.
“This exercise gives us the opportunity to remove the names of people who collect pension but have no records and are not genuine pensioners. It also gives us an opportunity to payroll pensioners who have been waiting; they are not on the payroll, or they used to be on the payroll but their names were dropped from the payroll for one reason or another though they are genuine pensioners.
“This gives us a chance – and them – (pensioners) a chance to present themselves for us to capture their data and for us to use it to calculate their benefits and pay them.”
She said the responsibility of PTAD was to manage the pensions of retirees of federal government ministries, agencies and departments by June 30th, 2007, which includes the defined benefit scheme or the old pension, the scheme that was in place before the government introduced the contributory pension scheme.
“We are partnering with other agencies in this verification exercise because the fraud in pension is what we want to put an end to. So, as you see in this centre, we have ICPC, EFCC, other government agencies like the budget office, accountant general’s office, and more importantly for this exercise, some staff of INEC.
“This is a federal government agency, and we are only responsible for federal government pensioners. But there are some pensioners that have part of their pension paid at the state level, because they used to work for federal government or they worked in a state that was split up before the creation of the new states, the federal government is responsible for part of their pension”, Mayshak said.
LEADERSHIP Sunday gathered that the verification exercise will involve about 150,000 pensioners across the country, and would resume in the New Year.
According to the federal government circular establishing PTAD, the new pension directorate was established in accordance with Section 30, Sub Section (2a) of the amended Pension Reform Act, 2004. The circular indicated that the directorate would take over the management of three of the offices presently running the old pension scheme.
“These are the Civil Service Pension Department, the Police Pension Office and the Customs, Immigration and Prisons Pension Office (CIPPO).”
The director general, the circular emphasised, will “spearhead the smooth transition of the three offices into a single pension administration and management under the supervision of the National Pension Commission (PENCOM), which would directly report to the Office of the Coordinating Minister for the Economy and Minister of Finance for coordination …”
A few months ago, PTAD announced the discovery of 3,000 ghost pensioners in the police pension scheme. Mayshak said the directorate saved the Federal Government more than N100 million monthly which she said would have been paid to the ghost pensioners.
According to her, “When PTAD was first given the police pensions payroll, it contained 18,000 pensioners which we thought were all genuine. But when we went around the states to verify, we discovered that there were just 15,000 pensioners in the police. If we had not made this discovery, we would have been paying pension to these non-existing 3,000 pensioners.”
She said PTAD is partnering the EFCC and ICPC to ensure that pension fraudsters are abolished from the system.
It will be recalled that seven persons were earlier charged to court by the EFCC for allegedly stealing N24 billion from the Police Pension Fund.
But Mayshak is optimistic that pension fund would not be stolen by anybody under her watch, more so given the on-going verification exercise of pensioners.
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