The Pension Transitional Arrangement Directorate (PTAD) has said it uncovered 4,000 ghost pensioners after it carried out pensioners’ verification and biometric data capturing for retired police personnel.
It said there were 20,000 police pensioners before the verification but the figure was reduced to 16,000 pensioners after the verification.
PTAD’s Executive Secretary Ikeazor Sharon spoke yesterday in Benin, the Edo State capital, at the verification of pensioners who retired from Federal Government agencies and corporations in Edo and Delta states.
Ikeazor, who decried the attitude of some relatives for their unwillingness to report death of pensioners, said such reports would enable the government to possess proper records of pensioners.
The PTAD chief said the verification had helped the Federal Government to save cost as those who were irregularly put on the payroll by the last administration had been taken out and genuine pensioners who were dropped had been reaffixed.
She advised the pensioners to always furnish the directorate with information about the deaths of pensioners to enable the agency remove their names from the government’s payroll.
According to her, the idea of a deceased children going to the bank with their (deceased) automated teller machine (ATM) cards to withdraw money was not the best thing to do.
Ikeazor said: “When we took on police pension, we had over 20,000 pensioners on our payroll. By the time we concluded the verification, we got 16,000 pensioners. That is a lot of savings for the government, and the genuine pensioners are now being paid.
“PTAD has four pension departments that it inherited when it was set up: the police pension, the civil service pension, the Customs, Immigration and Prisons Service and the parastatals pensions. What we are doing now is the parastatals verification, which is made up of over 260 government agencies.
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“This verification will be the last verification that will be conducted by PTAD because what we are doing is to have a credible secured data base. We will not bring our pensioners out again for verification once we conclude this. We have concluded police pension verification. Everyone here is on PTAD payroll; so, they will be verified and their pensions will continue. All those who have issues will be addressed. We do it state-by-state
“We are out in the field for two weeks and after the field verification ends, we will have state offices. We have an office here in Benin where they can go back and get their verification done. The Lagos office is set up also. We are trying to decentralise so that our pensioners don’t suffer and come all the way to Abuja for verification. In the comfort of their states, they will be verified.”
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