The Nigerian Union of Pensioners (NUP), has appealed to the Pension Transitional Arrangement Directorate (PTAD) to extend the deadline set by the agency to delete the names of pensioners who are yet to confirm their aliveness from monthly pension payroll.
The appeal followed an earlier letter by PTAD, informing NUP of impending action plans to remove 44,772 Civil Service Pensioners who have not confirmed their aliveness in the new internet-based confirmation system.
Titled: Update on the I Am Alive Confirmation (IAAC) For Civil Service Pensioners And The Impending System Removal of Pensioners Who Are Yet To Carry Out Their IAAC, the letter in part reads; “ As you may be aware, the Directorate commenced the IAAC exercise with the view of establishing a simple, convenient, cost-effective and systematic platform for the Pensioners to routinely confirm their aliveness status and thus enable the continued receipt of their monthly pension. Currently, a six-month period has been agreed on as the timeline/frequency for which a Pensioner is required to repeat the exercise, failure which such Pensioner will be removed from the payroll.
“The IAAC exercise for CSPD Pensioners commenced on 1st July 2023 and based on the current Six (6) months timeline /frequency, will end on 31st January 2024. What this means is that any Pensioner who fails to carry out his/her IAAC exercise on/or before 31% January 2024 will not be on the February 2024 payroll. However, the Executive Secretary has graciously approved a one-month extension, therefore moving the deadline for confirmation to 29th February 2024.
“In view of this, the Directorate has compiled a list of 44,772 CSPD Pensioners who as at date are yet to carry out their confirmation for your records. The list has been categorized by State and the names are arranged in alphabetical order for ease of reference. Please note that your Pensioners if they are alive, and fail to carry out the confirmation on/before 29th February 2024 will not be on the monthly payroll in March 2024.
“We, therefore solicit your help to reach out to the affected Pensioners, through your State Branches and Zonal Offices, and advise them to carry out the confirmation accordingly.”
NUP in its response authored by its General Secretary, Elder Actor Zal, said; “We do appreciate your concern at saving costs for the nation and your interest at serving the pensioners to the fullest. We equally appreciate your decision to extend the IAAC exercise by an additional one month, this is laudable.
“However, we are of the view that this is really not the best of time to remove anyone’s name from the payroll for whatever reason, considering the mood of the nation as at now and the effect of subsidy removal that is biting very hard on every home. Many of the pensioners in question can hardly afford an iPhone, while the few ones that have it can hardly operate it on their own. This is not their fault, majority of them are not computer literate.
“Please note that this office is not in any way supporting fraud or payments to ghost pensioners, but we are only sincerely appealing for enough time on behalf of real and genuine pensioners. We appeal for at least 3 3-month extensions of time for more publicity and sensitisation to be carried out both by the Union and your office. The number of pensioners involved is huge, removing by fiat, 44,772 pensioners’ names is calamitous and likely to cause public outcry too big for all of us to manage.
“You may wish to consider the Union’s appeal in the interest of our partnership. Please, be assured always of our highest and warm regards.”
NUP also noted that removal of pensioners for a reason during this critical period will be counterproductive as it may spark a nationwide protest.
In response to NUP appeal, PTAD Executive Secretary, Dr. Chioma Ejikeme, said; the Directorate has extended the deadline for the removal of non verified names of pensioners from its payroll to the last day of the month of March 2024.
In her words; “The extension is till the end of March. That is, pensioners who have not done their aliveness verification have the whole of March to confirm their aliveness. They would have been removed in March, but they will now not receive April pension if they do not confirm by the end of March.”
