By ROSEMARY ONUOHA

There are strong indications that pensioners under the Defined Benefit Scheme, DBS, who have been waiting since 2006 for their arrears to be paid, will have to wait till next year for it to be allocated in 2015 budget.

These pensioners were assured that their pension arrears will be paid this year when the federal government established the Pension Transitional Arrangement Directorate, PTAD, in August 2013 to oversee the running of the DBS.

However, Vanguard investigations show that these pensioners have to wait till next year for 2015 budget, even as there are still misgivings that 2015 might still be elusive due to the fact that it is an election year and politicians will only be interested in electioneering campaigns.

Although PTAD has assured pensioners that it is making efforts to pay all outstanding arrears, pensioners are skeptical that they might still have to wait long before the promise will come into fruition.

State Chairman of Nigeria Union of Pensioners, Comrade Joseph Dele who confirmed this to Vanguard said that pensioners are tired of completing forms all the time without any result. “We keep completing forms without results and we are tired,” Dele said.

“The Director General of PTAD has continued to assure us that they are working on it, how long will they continue to tell us that? We have been holding meetings with her since last year at Abuja and we expect her to pay the arrears of pensioners. It is not enough to say ‘we are going to pay.”

According to Dele, payment of pension arrears is important to pensioners who spent over 35 years in active service and they will only have rest of mind when their arrears are paid. “Since 2006, after the rightsizing in the civil service by former President Olusegun Obasanjo, so many people have not been collecting their monthly pension while some have not collected their gratuity.

Dele said, “If the DG of PTAD is truly working, let her pay our arrears. When the head of service was handling pensions, we all complained that things were not going fine, but at least they paid arrears to pensioners as at when due. They even invited the Nigerian Union of Pensioners to work with them. But since PTAD came on board, the story has changed.”

General Secretary, National Union of Pensioners, Chief Adeniyi Okunlade said that the federal government should alleviate the suffering of pensioners by allocating money for their arrears.

According to him, the federal government should desist from punishing pensioners that have served their fatherland in their youth.

Meanwhile, Director General of PTAD, Nellie Mayshak, told Vanguard that although the Directorate is overwhelmed with backlog of complaints from pensioners due to the dysfunction of the past, they are working hard to bring smiles to the faces of pensioners.

She assured that pension funds are now safe and government will no longer create pension managers for the DBS because former managers were only interested in siphoning pension funds to their pockets.

She said that PTAD now pays pensioners using electronic platform while the monies are transferred from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and if any money is not claimed, it returns back to the CBN.

Mayshak said that the large scale fraud that the pension system experienced in the past is gone for good because there is transparency with the use of electronic payment.

She said, “We did not create the mess, but we are working to resolve the situation.”

According to her, pensioners should give PTAD more time to rectify the anomaly of the past and enshrine a new and workable pension system in the country.

The PTAD is an agency of the Federal Government established in August 2013 in compliance with the provisions of section 30 sub-section (2) (a) of the Pension Reform Act of 2004 (now amended in 2014) . This is now restated in section 42 (1) of the 2014 Act.

The purpose of PTAD is to manage pensions under the Defined Benefits Scheme (DBS) for pensioners not transiting to the Contributory Scheme (CS). PTAD is made up of the Civil Service Pension; Police Pension; the Customs, Immigration and Prisons Pension; as well as the Treasury Funded Parastatals Pension.