PTAD Collaborates With Anti-Graft Agencies To Halt Pension Payment Challenges

The Pension Transitional Arrangement Directorate (PTAD) has expressed its readiness to collaborate with relevant stakeholders, including anti-graft agencies in the country, to quell the challenges associated with payment of pensions to pensioners under its payroll.

To this end, the agency organised a sensitisation and collaboration forum with anti-graft agencies and other relevant stakeholders in Abuja, with the Department of State Security (DSS), Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC), Independent Corrupt Practices and other related offences Commission (ICPC), Public Complaint Commission, Nigerian Union of Pensioners (NUP) and others in attendance.

Speaking at the event, the Executive Secretary of PTAD, Dr Chioma Ejeikeme, said, “The Directorate has deemed it fit and important to engage these group of stakeholders in order to continually re-strategise and come to terms with the realities of pension payments and its attendant challenges. It is against this backdrop that PTAD is holding the second edition of this programme.

“We all will recall that the pension industry had been swamped with complaints of extortion by fraudsters and phone calls demanding for money in order to quicken computation and payment of outstanding liabilities. Also, the past ineffective and poor management in the industry before pension reforms put pension management under the Defined Benefit Scheme in bad light.

“Following these issues, the advent of the pension reforms championed by the Directorate has a two-pronged situation: settling the outstanding pension arrears and sanitising the monthly payroll management, as well as curbing fraud within the pension industry.

“We are sensitising the law enforcement agencies like ICPC, EFCC, for them to really understand what we do because the perception out there and the knowledge that people out there have is that pension is being administered the way it was in the past, and that is not the case. So we want to make sure that our processes and the way we conduct our payments is very well known to not just them, but also the general public.”

On resolving the challenges faced by the Directorate regarding payment of pensions, she said, “There are challenges though not significant, but then I keep saying that the voice of one disgruntled pensioner is louder than the voices of the 220,000 plus pensioners that would have gotten their money. So if out of over 220,000 pensioners one pensioner doesn’t get his or her money, it becomes very loud and very significant.

“We are bringing in the relevant stakeholders for us to sit down and look at how to address them and also get input from the stakeholders. They are there in the field and they know what is going on better than what we do. So they might also have an input to help us to improve our processes.”

On the rumoured probe of PTAD for nonpayment of pensions by the House of Representatives, she said, “It was all lies being told by a particular pension union executive saying that PTAD was owing nine months arrears of pension. Talking about 18,000 pensioners in Lagos State not receiving their pension. We don’t even have 18,000 pensioners in Lagos. We have about 3,000 federal pensioners in Lagos State and he was quoting 18,000.

“And he was talking about nine months arrears. PTAD, since inception, has been paying monthly pensions. We have never owed monthly pension to date. But do we have pensioners who we are owing arrears? Yes. Do we have payments that fail now and again? Yes.

“That is what we are constantly addressing. To be talking about trillions of Naira being allocated to PTAD for pension annually and we not paying attention is ridiculous. Because even the PTAD pension budget for the year, it goes into about 200 and something billion for pensions. And since the inception of PTAD, the agency has not gotten up to N1 trillion for pension and that is in the nine year period. So how can we now be talking about trillions of money allocated for one year?”