…3,000 fake names removed from police, army, others

By Peter Okutu

ABAKALIKI—Pension Transitional Arrangement Directorate, PTAD, yesterday, said it has saved the Federal Government about N100 million monthly by checkmating fraudulent pension payments in the country.

The Director General of PTAD, Mr. Nellie Mayshak made this known while addressing journalists in Abakaliki during the verification exercise of civil service pensioners that took place in Abakaliki and other parts of South-East geo-political zone.

Nellie noted that the objective of the verification exercises was to establish a credible, authentic and digitalized database of pensioners under the Defined Benefit Scheme, DBS, eliminate duplicate payments and fish out ghost workers from the civil service.

He noted that the verification was also aimed to regularize anomalies such as over payments and under-payments of salaries to pensioners across the country.

“PTAD is as a directorate under the Federal Ministry of Finance established in August 2013 in compliance with the provisions of section 30 sub-section (2) (a) of the Pension Reform Act of 2004 and as restated in section 42(1) of the amended act of 2014 to manage the old pension scheme (Defined Benefit Schemes –DBS) for pensioners who retired on or before June 2007 and did not transit to the new contributory scheme.

“With the successful completion of the nationwide biometric verification of Police, Customs, Immigration and Prison Pensioners, PTAD was able to identify and remove over 3,000 bogus names from the payroll. This has in effect saved the Federal Government about N100 million monthly in fraudulent pension payments.

“We are able to restore monthly pension payments to genuine pensioners previously removed from the payroll, including 750 Pensioners (made up of 529 regular police retirees and 221 Next of Kin, NOKs, who had never been paid any pension or gratuity, some for over 10 years after retirement.

Nellie expressed the preparedness of the Commission to bring sanity in the payment of pensions to pensioners noting that pensioners who were not receiving their pensions prior to the establishment of PTAD, can now be paid.

He added that the verification started November 2, 2015 with pensioners in the North West zone of the country covering Jigawa, Kano, Kebbi, Sokoto, Katsina, Kaduna and Zamfara states, and will be closely followed by the South East zone of Anambra, Enugu, Ebonyi, Abia and Imo states from November 30 – December 12, 2015.