…Deploys verification payment team to the three senatorial zones
From Noah Ebije, Kaduna
As the Kaduna State Pension Bureau began verification payment of gratuity and death benefits of the beneficiaries, the Executive Secretary, Professor Salamatu Idris Isah has allayed the fears of the people that no single file will miss.
Prof. Isah assured the beneficiaries that the payment principles is about first in, first served, adding that delay in sighting names on the list for verification payment excrcise did not amount to missing of file in the actual sense of it.
Addressing a press conference on Thursday, the Executive Secretary also disclosed that verification payment team from the bureau will move to the three senatorial zones of the State as part of processes of final payment of benefits to the beneficiaries.
Recall that the State governor, Uba Sani had fortnight ago announced the allocation of N3.1 billion to the State Pension Bureau for payment of gratuity and death benefits for pensioners and the families of the deceased in the State.
“People complaining about their names or files missing may not understand the workings here. We have been paying gratuity and benefits, and as I said earlier we have a principle of payment which is first in, first served.What it means is that when your file is being processed, when it comes to pension bureau, the date that your file is being processed is registered against your name. People say they are retired in 2015, but before, the file that is being processed is reading 2016 or 2017. So it is one thing for you to say you retired in 2015, and it is another thing for us to have gotten your file that period. So there is nothing like file missing. If we bring out list is based on first in, first served. Everybody’s turn will come as we continue with the verification exercise. No file is missing in actual sense of it.
“If you have not seen your list it means we have not come to your name yet as the first in, first served principle. We are doing payment batch by batch, the State is batch 22, local government is batch 20, and new contributory pension is batch 25. So we do payment batch by batch. Even if any batch has not come forward for payment at the time they are needed, their money is with us in the bank, and whenever they come for payment we do verification payment and pay them their benefits.
“We have a team from the pension bureau to move to the three senatorial zones to do verification payment of the retirees and families of the deceased by next week. We say next week because we give this week for the people to identify their names on the list we have pasted. Then next week we start verification payment.
“In the last two weeks we all heard the State governor, Uba Sani allocating N3.1 billion to the State Pension Bureau for payment of gratuity and death benefits for pensioners and the families of the deceased in the State. And out of that amount, N2.6 billion is allocated to payment of retirees in the old scheme, while N100 million is allocated to retirees in the ministries.
“And we have scheduled the list for payment based on first in, first served, that is the principle we are going to use for the payment. You have heard the pensioners saying they are on queue; so that is actually the queue we are going to follow to get the list. So for this list, we are coming out with the list of 1051 people for both retirees and death cases. For example, the total number of local government retirees we are going to pay is 542 beneficiaries, while in the State old scheme we are paying a total of 231 beneficiaries. So that gives a total of 773 beneficiaries.
“For the new scheme which we allocated N500 million we are paying 178 beneficiaries. You will realise that the N500 million will not be as much as we have in the old scheme of N2.6 billion. So this is what we have. The list has already been circulated”. The pension Boss said.