Civil service pensioners receive N6.2bn from PITAD
By Asishana John
The Pension Transitional Arrangement Directorate (PTAD) has said that it spent N6.2 billion clearing the pension arrears of 16,210 pensioners in its project which reviewed, computed and recomputed the beneficiary’s fund.
PTAD’s head of corporate communications, Gbenga Ajayi in a statement, said that the directorate had embarked on an expanded revalidation and re-computation exercise for the purpose of clearing all pension arrears as well as resolving all complaints of short payments, outstanding gratuities for civil service pensioners and their Next of Kin (NoK).
“This is in fulfillment of the promise made by Dr Chioma Ejikeme, the executive secretary, PTAD, at the directorate’s press conference in September 2020, where she declared a state of emergency on the payment of outstanding entitlements to pensioners and set-up an expanded project team to ramp up on the computation of benefits for all verified Civil Service Pensioners,” Ajayi said.
He also noted that the project was targeted at reducing the number of complaints received by the directorate on short payments, qualified pensioners not on payroll and other outstanding benefits to the pensioners and the NoK of deceased pensioners.
According to the statement, the process followed a rigorous screening of thousands of entries with their various complaints.
“During the exercise which lasted between September 2020 and March 2021, a total of 46,284 pensioners’ files were reviewed for end-to-end quality assurance.
“A total sum of N6.2 billion naira has been paid as arrears of gratuity, monthly payments and one-off payments to 16,210 Pensioners/Nok that are qualified for the payment after the computation.
“Over 1,000 qualified pensioners not on payroll, post verification, have been put on the payroll and their arrears paid,” the statement revealed.
The pension directorate further noted that the project which is geared towards continuous resolution of complaints had ensured that pensioners with outstanding documents such as bank statement, BVN and other required document, were contacted to resolve their complaints effectively.
“Calls were put across to the affected pensioners, letters were also written requesting them to forward documents to the directorate for the resolution of their complaints.
“The end of Q2 2021 would see settlement in all issues relating to short payments, gratuity and other forms of arrears for civil service pensioners. Also pensioners’ welfare and wellbeing remained of utmost priority,” PTAD assured.
