PTAD Terminates 14,686 Ghost Civil Service Pensioners

The Pension Transitional Arrangement Directorate (PTAD) has eliminated 14,686 ghost civil service pensioners, Dr Chioma Ejikeme, Executive Secretary of PTDA disclosed this in a recent training for correspondents organised in Lagos.

The executive secretary was represented by the Director, Parastatals Pension Department, Kabiru Yusuf, who revealed that the Directorate has 107,785 civil service pensioners on its payroll. Over the years, the agency has made efforts to change the narrative of pension administration, especially under the Defined Benefits Scheme (DBS).

Dr Ejikeme also revealed that pension management is a sensitive subject and the Directorate has been making efforts to ensure that the welfare of pensioners under the DBS remained a priority.

The Directorate also charged the media, to help inform pensioners and the public on their various pension plans to ensure that the welfare of pensioners is sustained.

This update is coming on the heels of a recent update by The National Pension Commission (PenCom) where it revealed that 1,526 organisations had remitted a total of N4,047,499,080.64 into the Retirement Savings Accounts (RSAs) of their employees in the fourth quarter (Q4) of 2021.

Investors King recalls that according to the data from PenCom, the total number of employee savings accounts that were credited stands at 15,603. The report also revealed that at the end of Q4 2021, twenty-five (25) States of the Federation had passed pension laws based on the Contributory Pension Scheme (CPS), with seven (7) states in the process of doing so.

Speaking on the achievements of The Pension Transitional Arrangement Directorate, Director, Civil Service Pension Department (CSPD), Sulayman Shelleng, revealed that the agency has also created a reliable database for civil service pensioners and initiated a decent digital/physical archiving solution.

Sulayman also pointed out that there had also been a payroll clean-up through the Bank Verification Number (BVN) introduced in November 2016. He stated that this has led to the removal of ghost pensioners in April 2018 and the creation of automation of the benefit computation/payroll management.

This update is quite innovative for a sector that has struggled with poor data management, and lack of technical input to make processes easier for all stakeholders in the sector.