The Pension Transitional Arrangement Directorate (PTAD) has revealed that it paid the sum of N96 billion to pensioners between July last year and August 2020.
244,643 pensioners received N77 billion under the old Defined Benefit Pension Schemes, while 87,842 pensioners were paid arrears and gratuities of over N19billion.
Executive Secretary of PTAD, Dr. Chioma Ejikeme, who made this known yesterday in Abuja, during a news conference, added that over N670 million was paid to 418 Next-of-Kins (NoKs) of deceased pensioners.
She said: “Between July 2019 and August 2020, PTAD paid a total of over N96 billion across all the Operational Departments. The sum of over N77 billion was paid as monthly pensions payments to 244,643 pensioners as at July 2020. 87,842 pensioners were paid arrears and gratuities of over N19billion.
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“The sum of over 670 million was paid to 418 Next of Kins of deceased pensioners. The above payments include the balance of 33 percent arrears for the Parastatal Pensioners which had been outstanding since 2010 and was fully paid to the Pensioners and NoKs in November/December 2019.’’
“The Directorate made payments in December 2019 as well as in the 2nd and 3rd quarters of 2020. This payment was made to various groups of pensioners to reduce the inherited liabilities from the New Nigeria Newspapers, NICON insurance, Nig-Reinsurance, Delta Steel Company, NITEL and NAHCO.
“Following the successful conclusion of the nation-wide parastatals pensioners’ verification exercise in November 2019 and mop up exercise through the in-house verification for those that missed the field exercise, a total of 21,227 pensioners on the payroll were found to have not been verified.
“PTAD has sent the list of these pensioners to the Pension Unions/Associations/Agencies and the information is also on the PTAD website to enable pensioners who are on the list and alive to make themselves available for verification. Deceased pensioners and unresponsive pensioners on the list will be removed from the payroll from October 2020.
“In 2019, PTAD collaborated with Nigeria Interbank Settlement System (NIBSS) on Bank Verification Number (BVN) Authentication. The NlBSS BVN validation exercise led to the suspension of 5,834 pensioners from the payroll. However, 2,416 of those removed have been restored after undergoing positive review and validation.”
