FG Approves Payment of N1.3 billion Death Benefits for Deceased Workers.

The Federal Government has approved the sum of N1.3 billion for the payment of death benefits to the beneficiaries of 497 deceased workers in the Federal Civil Service.

This was disclosed by the Permanent Secretary, Service Welfare Office (SWO), Office of the Head of Civil Service of the Federation (OHCSF), Didi Walson-Jack, on Wednesday, April 10, at the 2nd edition of the permanent secretary’s quarterly forum with labour leaders in ministries, departments and agencies.

Didi Walson-Jack, further disclosed that payment to the beneficiaries will commence before the end of April 2019 and it’s the result of the verification exercise conducted across 116 MDAs in January 2019.

She said, “In order to make payments to deceased next-of-kin, a service-wide verification exercise of backlog of death benefits claims of 563 deceased officers cutting across 116 MDAs was conducted in January 2019.  “To confirm the veracity of the claim requests submitted by the MDAs, after the verification exercise, a total of 497 next-of -kins of deceased officers were cleared for payment of N1.3bn.” 

Walson-Jack said that the Pension Reform Act, 2014, provided that every employer of labour with not less than five employees must insure its employees to a minimum of three times of their annual total emoluments. 

She noted that the Act had marked the beginning of the Group Life Assurance (GLA) scheme under the OHCSF for federal public servants. According to her, GLA scheme is the scheme whereby the federal government has insured the life of every serving officer and this has been done in line with the Pension Reform Act. 

Walson-jack explained that every serving officer who dies has benefits which his or her next of kin could claim.