The Executive Secretary, Pension Transitional Arrangement Directorate, Dr. Chioma Ejikeme, has said the agency will place retirees of the Bank of Agriculture. They are not on pensions on the payroll after the verification exercise.
She said this during a five-day verification exercise of pensioners of the BoA in the South-West zone and mop–up verification for other pensioners who missed previous exercises under the Defined Benefit Scheme in the zone.
“We are here to verify genuine pensioners and place them on payroll,” she said.
During the verification in Lagos, she said PTAD had been getting complaints from some pensioners whose claims had not been verified and had not been put on the payroll.
The PTAD boss said it was conducting the verification exercise of BoA retirees who retired before 2007 and did not transit to the Contributory Pension Scheme.
While noting that some of them had been onboarded, she explained that they were not part of the treasury-funded pension scheme before but were part of the poverty alleviation agencies.
She said, “After this exercise, they will be put on the payroll. We will validate the verification to banks, do what we normally do under quality assurance, and do computation. We will put them on the payroll because we have already made provisions for them.
“This is the verification for the South-West zone. We are going to go to the North-Central and North-West for verification. For the other zones, we are going to work out a mobile verification strategy because they don’t have too many people there.”
According to her, a number of retirees under the parastatal pensions department, who were eligible to be on the payroll, had been put on the payroll.
She said settlement of arrears in the Defined Benefits Scheme was a continuous process.
The Head, Human Resources, Bank of Agriculture, Tsukunda Yakubu, said the programme was well+ planned.
She said, “We have been working with PTAD for a period of time. We have had our timetable set out and everything has been working out very well.
“It is something that started before the COVID-19. It has been on but as soon as she came on board, she made sure that she put all machinery in action to ensure that this happens this year.
“We are very happy and grateful that she made out time to come and we thank the Federal Government for the creation of PTAD.”
