The Pension Transition Arrangement Directorate, PTAD, has settled 16,873 pensioners of seven defunct/privatised agencies in the country.
This excludes 759 next-of-kins of deceased pensioners of the defunct agencies that had equally been paid their departed breadwinner’s final entitlements.
A breakdown shows NITEL/MTEL- 10,801; Delta Steel Company- 3,593; NICON Insurance- 949; Nigeria Reinsurance- 292; New Nigeria Newspapers- 507; Nigerian Defense Academy (Civilians)- 79; and Federal Housing Authority- 652.
Executive Secretary of PTAD, Sharon Ikeazor said in a statement in Abuja Thursday that the agency had verified and placed the pensioners on a monthly pension payroll.
Ikeazor used the occasion to advanced reasons thousands of workers of the defunct Nigerian National Shipping Line are yet to be enrolled into the Defined Benefits Scheme, so they could get their pension as their counterparts in similar agencies.
He said that the delay in computing the pension of the NNSL ex-workers was due to non-verification of the salary structure of the defunct agency many months after it got presidential approval to enroll the former workers.
The secretary also said PTAD has concluded plans to capture and pay the benefits of the ex-workers of Aluminium Smelter Company of Nigeria, Ikot Abasi, Savannah Sugar Company, NNSL and others as approved by the Federal Ministry of Finance.
The statement said: “This policy saw to the enrolment of pensioners of Delta Steel Company, Nicon Insurance, Nigeria Reinsurance, New Nigerian Newspapers and NITEL/MTEL, all agencies that were either privatised or liquidated by previous governments without contingency safety nets for the thousands of their hardworking Nigerian employees.
“Plans are already at advanced stages towards the verification and subsequent enrolment of qualified ex-workers of Savannah Sugar Company, Aluminium Smelter Company, NNSL and others as approved by the HMF.”
Ikeazor made it clear that there was no deliberate attempt on the part of PTAD to unduly delay or deny the workers of the former shipping line their dues, adding that it was working round the clock to clear all obstacles against the settlement of their pay.
The PTAD boss pointed out that having successfully verified and settled the pension of 16,873 pensioners of seven other defunct privatised agencies, there was no reason not to capture and pay those of NNSL and others still outstanding.
He said: “In the case of NNSL, the approval for enrolment was received in April 2018, several months after the first set of agencies was approved.
”The Directorate’s pre-verification exercise for pensioners is a long and painstaking inter-ministerial process that requires the collection of data and digitisation of documents.
“Most significantly, it requires getting the authentic salary structure of the agency concerned, which in the case of NNSL was not an easy feat.
”When PTAD eventually got a response in that regard from the Federal Ministry of Transport, representatives of the union, whom the Directorate had been actively engaging with all along, declared the document incomplete, saying that it did not include the salary structure of its seamen, though PTAD is yet to receive any formal information from Federal Ministry of Transport regarding that allusion.
