By EMMA UNA

Every month, Cross River State Pensions Board, CSPB, receives N180 million from the government to pay pensions to over seven thousand pensioners.

Governor Imoke

Pension and You investigations revealed that though the pension payment has been regular, but most of the pensioners have not been paid their gratuities.

The practice, investigation, has revealed, is that once a staff retires, he or she is immediately enrolled into the pension scheme to start receiving his or her pension, but without gratuity.

While some have received part of their gratuities, most of the seven thousand pensioners have not been paid their gratuities till date.

The explanation is that after the payment of pension, not much is left from N180million for the payment of gratuity to those leaving service and unfortunately, for years, the pensioners are made to wait for their gratuities. A lot of them have reportedly died with receiving their gratuities.

Explaining CSPB predicament, Mr. John Adie, its Director, said the state government, because of paucity of funds, ensures that the moment a person retires from service, he is enrolled into the electronic payment system of the pension’s board to start receiving pensions while waiting for the gratuity.

According to Mr. Adie, the pension office does not originate files for payment, but the local government councils that know who their retired teachers, civil servants. The files are forwarded to the Ministry of Local Government Service Commission, MLGSC, and from there to the Accountant General Office, AGO, for the affected persons’ gratuities and pensions to be worked out.

He said, “We insist that all the files must go through the Local Government Service Commission for their authentication before any action is taken by the Pensions Board and after that the Auditor General has to confirm the figures computed for each pensioner.”

Mr. Adie disclosed that pension payment system introduced by the Cross River State Pensions Board, has led to the recovery of 26 million Naira between 2012 and 2013 to the state coffers.

The sum of 17 million naira was recovered in 2012 while 9 million naira was recovered in payments made in the first and second quarters of 2013.

Adie, told  Pension and You,  that in 2012, the office came up with the novel idea of paying pensioners in the state through the e- payment  system; a process whereby the accounts of the pensioners are  credited without  cheques being lodged  into the accounts of the pensioners in banks across the state.

“In the past, our staff would have to travel to all parts of the state to deposit cheques in banks for subsequent crediting to each pensioner’s account. But in 2012, we came up with the idea of paying the pensioners electronically through their banks here in Calabar.”

The Director of CRSPB said it was in the process of the e-payment that it was discovered that some pensioners had more than one account that cheques were paid into, noting this discovery led to the recovery of the huge sums of money.

According to him, “The e-payment made it impossible for one pensioner to be credited twice so some payments bounced back but for the avoidance of doubt, we kept releasing monies to those accounts for three months and when nobody came forward to make any claims, we knew that those accounts were phony so we had to stop releasing money to them and went ahead to recoup the money in the banks which gave us the figure we had as recovered funds.”

He lamented that “some pensioners perfected the act whereby their children were also signatories to their accounts such that when they pass on, the son automatically begins to sign and collect the pension from the bank.  But we have checkmated all those illegalities that is why some people are fighting us to bring in their own persons to continue their past deals.”

The Director explained that the Board had carried out reforms by down loading the files of all pensioners into a data base in the board’s website to enable pensioners have access to their files from any where they chose without having to travel to Calabar, saying “this is the first state pensions board in the whole country to activate this method of electronic filing system to give every pensioner whose file is is with us free and easy access to his or her file.”