PTAD projects 813 Bank of Agriculture pensioners for ongoing verification

The Pension Transitional Arrangement Directorate (PTAD) on Tuesday said it would verify more than 813 pensioners under the Defunct Benefit Scheme (DBS) of Bank of Agriculture Ltd., across the country.

PTAD Executive Secretary, Dr Chioma Ejikeme said this in an interview on the sideline of the South-West zone verification mop up exercise for Parastatal Payroll pensioners and Bank of Agriculture pensioners in Lagos.

Ejikeme said that the directorate had made provision for the payment of the monthly pension of the pensioners in its 2022 budget.

“In 2018, when the Bank of Industry approached PTAD to take over the pension of its defunct pensioners, we were given a list of 853 pensioners, but presently we have 813 pensioners.

“This means the difference would have been for deceased pensioners, but we are still making provision for the difference because some of them may be represented by their Next of Kin,” she said.

According to her, many of the benefitting pensioners have retired way back before the introduction of the Contributory Pension Scheme (CPS) and were not part of the Treasury Funded Agencies but of the Poverty Alleviation Agencies.

The executive secretary listed the Agencies that formed the Bank of Agricultural Ltd., to include; the Peoples Bank, Nigeria Agricultural Community Bank and the Family Economic Advancement Programme.

Ejikeme said, “We have already unboarded the staff of People’s Bank. These are workers who retired before the June 2007 cut off line for the Defunct Benefit Scheme (DBS) and did not transit to the CPS.

“We will validate the verification that we have done through laid down procedures, carry out further quality assurance, computation and placement on the payroll.”

The executive secretary explained that the exercise was organised to address complaints from some pensioners that they were not verified and appropriately placed on the payroll during the last verification.

Ejikeme said having concluded with the South-West zone within one week, the directorate would proceed to verify pensioners within the North-Central zone in Abuja and then to pensioners in the North-West zone which would be verified in Kano.

“For the other zones, we are going to work out a mobile verification strategy because there are not too many pensioners there.

“We actually looked at the geographical spread of the pension before taking a decision on how to go about it.

“We have started working on the Parastatals Payroll Pensioners and quite a lot of them who are eligible to be on the payroll have been placed,” she said.

The Head of Human Resources, Bank of Agriculture Ltd., Mrs Tsukunda Yakubu lauded PTAD and the Federal Government for taking over the payment of its defunct pensioners monthly benefits.

“We have been working with PTAD for some time to set out the timetable for the verification even before the appointment of the executive secretary, but she keyed into it as soon as she came on board.

“The executive secretary has put all machinery in place to ensure that this happens and the pensioners are very happy about it.

“Bank of Industry is happy that PTAD is taking over the pension of our retirees.

“With this, the load the bank has been carrying for years now is being taken off its shoulders, it will no longer worry about how to pay its pensioners, knowing that PTAD is in charge,” she said.

Some pensioners or their Next of Kin across the South-West zone had shown up for the exercise.

The exercise is expected to run for a week in the zone.