OMOWA: Hello, my name is Omowa from Igarra, Akoko, Edo Local Government Area, Edo State. I have been receiving my monthly pension after my verification in 2019, in Benin City by PTAD. But, suddenly, they started underpaying me from October by N27, 262.91. Please help resolve the issue. Thanks.
OYELAKIN: My name is Oyelakin. I retired on July 31, 2002. My date of first appointment was December 1970. My federal share of pension started from December 2, 1970 to March 31, 1976, spanning five years and five months. I was placed on payroll in September 2010, leaving my pension arrears of August 2002 to August 2010 unpaid. I made several attempts to get the arrears paid but all to no avail; I sent my bank statements to authenticate my claim. Kindly help me. Thanks for your concern..
ADUEMA: Good day, I am Aduema. My mum has a complaint. Since she retired, she has not been paid her gratuity but she has been receiving her pension. Her set of retirees have been paid. She has health issues and cannot move around.
MRS ADEBOWALE: Good day. Kindly let me know when the verification of the retired primary school teacher will start.
AYODELE: Hello, my complaint is about underpayment of monthly pensions. I wish to put up a reminder that I am yet to get any acknowledgement or response on my complaints to your organisation about three weeks ago on the above subject. This is after promises by your receptionists to deliver my complaints to the appropriate authority for further actions. In October, last year, I was surprised to notice a huge deduction of N48,861.19 from my monthly pension of N154,015.36, for an excuse tagged overpayment of pension and which was not earlier communicated to me.
From my computations of the deductions yanked off, I believe that it was wrong to have carried out such deductions. By the way, I started working in 1970 and retired from service on August 1, 2005 from Nigerian Institute for Trypanosomiasis Research, Kaduna (NITR), a parastatal under the Federal Ministry of Science and Technology, as a Chief Technical Officer Laboratory Instruments, on HATISS 13, Step 9. As at the time of retirement, my pension was N92,170.75.
However, two years later, August 2007, there was a 15 per cent pension increment that jerked my pension up to N105,996.36. Three years later, which was August 2010, there was another 33 per cent increment of N34,978.80 that leveraged my pension to N140,975.16. And in April, 2019, there was a consequential pension adjustment of 0.0925 per cent or N13,040.20, which finally brought my pension to N154,015.36.
But surprisingly, from October, 2023, I observed that, a huge chunk of N48,861.19 monthly deductions were made till date from my pensions, with the excuse that there were some overpayments, which in actual fact is not true from the in depth analysis I have proffered.
The pension refund I expect from you as of April, 2024 is N342,028.33 which I am believing would be paid this month. These shortfalls have been causing me a lot of financial setbacks. I am aware that a review committee was set up towards the end of last year by the Executive Secretary, PTAD to tidy these grievances which are not limited to me or my parastatal alone but to several others. Times are pretty hard for even workers not to talk of vulnerable pensioners whose pays are nothing to write home about. At this juncture, I am imploring you to use your good offices to write this wrong, by reversing the status quo and refunds made back as quickly as possible. Thanks and God bless.
THE NATION: The newspaper will intervene by sending your complaint to PTAD. Therefore, OMOWA, OYELAKIN, ADUEMA, MRS ADEBOWALE, and AYODELE should watch out for the pension page on Wednesdays for response from PTAD and subsequently every Wednesday for pension news.
