Justifications for removing 21,227 Pensioners from PTAD Payroll
Pension Transitional Arrangement Directorate (PTAD) recently announced that, effective from October 2020, it will remove 21,227 unverified parastatal pensioners who are on its payroll and had not presented themselves for verification.
Below are the justifications for removing the 21,227 pensioners from PTAD Payroll
The affected parastatal pensioners did not turn up for PTAD 2019 Parastatal Pensions Department (PaPD) nationwide and in-house verification exercises nor submitted documentary request for mobile verification or registered as diaspora pensioners.
The PTAD PaPD verification exercise for all federally funded parastatals, agencies and institutes under the Defined Benefit Scheme was conducted throughout the six geo-political zones of the country.
In each zone, conducive centres located at strategic and accessible locations were provided to carry out the exercise for an average period of two weeks per zone. A total of 32 centres were provided for the exercise which ran from April to November 2019.
A total of 76,064 parastatals pensioners were verified and documented. PTAD did additional verification exercise, through continuous in-house verification for those that could not be verified during the field exercise, in PTAD offices in Lagos and Abuja where a total of 3,150 additional pensioners were verified and documented.
The National Assembly, especially the House Committee on Pension and Senate Committee on Establishment and Public Service provided legislative oversight support throughout the PTAD verification exercise.
Pension unions were part of the stakeholders that mobilised and monitored their members for the PTAD verification exercise.
Government anti-fraud agencies such as Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC), Department of State Service (DSS) and the Police were on ground to monitor and provide support for the exercise.
Pensioners who registered with PTAD as diaspora pensioners and pensioners who requested for mobile verification, but have not yet been verified, are not among those that will be removed from PTAD payroll.
To ensure no deceased pensioners are on PTAD payroll, after one year of completion of verification exercise, PTAD needs to remove those that did not turn up for verification and did not request for mobile verification or registered as diaspora pensioners.
PTAD has released the list of the pensioners to be removed to, pension unions, associations, agencies and institutes, since July 2020 for dissemination and sensitisation of their members, and to give feedback to PTAD.
Pensioners can check whether their names are among the pensioners to be removed and PTAD has released guidelines which bonafide pensioners among the 21,227 pensioners, can follow to ensure that their names are not removed from PTAD payroll.