PTAD Harvests 237, 000 Pensioners In Database Payroll, Pays Over N7.8 Billion Monthly

L-R: Deputy Secretary General, Nigerian Union of Pensioners, Chief Joseph Okunmade; Executive Secretary, Pension Transitional Arrangement Directorate (PTAD), Mrs Sharon Ikeazor and Director (Pension Support Services) ,PTAD, Mrs Olufunmilayo Onafowokan, while reviewing PTAD activities in 2017 and Strategies for 2018 in Abuja.

*Deletes From Payroll 22, 021 Pensions For Non-appearance In Verification Exercise

*Saves FG N6 Billion Annual Payments To Unidentified Persons

By CLEMENT NWOJI, Abuja

The Pension Transitional Arrangement Directorate (PTAD) on Wednesday disclosed that over 237, 000 pensioners are currently in its database with a monthly pension payment of more than N7.8 billion.

The current number of pensioners excludes  22,021 pensioners who failed to turn up for verification exercise and 19, 000 pensioners without verifiable bank Biometric Verification Numbers (BVN) totalling more than 41,000 pensioners which PTAD said it has removed from its payroll.

The Executive Secretary of PTAD, Sharon Ikeazor, made these disclosures while briefing Journalists on developments and achievements of the Directorate thus far within the last one year.

Saying that the year, 2017 was a very busy year during which PTAD recorded lot of positives, Mrs Ikeazor said that with the delisting of the 22,021 retirees who did not show up for verification from the payroll, the federal government was saved monthly payment of N495, 022,747.57 amounting to approximately N6 billion annually which would have gone into accounts of unknown persons.

According to her, under the Civil Service Pension Department (CSPD), PTAD through verification exercise successfully added 7,969 verified Civil Service Pensioners to the payroll.

She said: “These are pensioners who were verified in the South West and North Central in Q4 2017. Before this addition, over 19,500 verified Civil Service pensioners from the North West, South East, North East and South South had been reinstated and paid their arrears. Also ongoing is the computation of benefits for over 5,000 verified Civil Service Pensioners. This will conclude the payrolling of all verified Civil Service Pensioners.

For the Parastatal Pension Department (PaPD), it added over 700 verified Parastatal Pensioners from the Federal Housing Authority and NDA (Civilians) to the payroll to begin to receive monthly pension payments.

It would be recalled that PTAD started verification of defunct and privatised agencies in fourth-quarter, 2017 with the verification of pensioners from Nicon, New Nigeria Newspapers, NDA (Civilians), the Federal Housing Authority and Nigerian-Re.

She said the computation of benefits of New Nigerian Newspapers (NNN) pensioners – 467 pensioners and 17 Next of Kins (NoK) was concluded in first quarter, 2018 but have not payrolled owing to some judicial issues that need to be resolved.

Also, about 4,182  pensioners were verified as Delta Steel Company (DSC) pensioners  in 2017 while over 22,000 NITEL/MTEL pensioners were verified in 2018.

The PTAD Executive Secretary who maintained that payment of monthly pensions to pensioners who are on PTAD payroll had been regular,  assured that the computation of benefits of all verified pensioners were being worked on, adding that as soon as it is concluded, those involved would be paid.

Further update she gave include that 2,830 Civil Service Pensioners, verified in the North East between Nov 2016-Jan 2017, who were wrongly removed from the payroll prior to the establishment of PTAD, were put back on the payroll and paid their total arrears of N1,328,935,014.82  by June 2017.

Also, 8, 564 Civil Service Pensioners verified in the South-South between Jan-Feb 2017 were payrolled and paid arrears of a total of N4, 984,219,446.99 from June -Dec 2017.

In respect of outstanding pension arrears, Mrs Ikeazor, explained that the Directorate makes payment when funds are available from the treasury, Treasury Single Account (TSA) domiciled with Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).

“So far, payment of the outstanding 33 percent arrears for pensioners under the Paramilitary has been done (full payment – 42 months), Civil Service (12 months outstanding), Parastatal (18- 36 months outstanding. This varies for different agencies) and Police (12 months outstanding)”, she said.