The Pension Transitional Arrangement Directorate (PTAD) has begun the verification and enrollment of 813 pensioners of the Bank of Agriculture (BOA) to ease the burden on the bank.
The Executive Secretary of PTAD, Chioma Ejimeke revealed this in Kano during the ongoing verification exercise of pensioners and next of kin of deceased pensioners of the defunct National Agricultural and Rural Development Bank which has been taken over by the BOA from the Northwest and Northeast geopolitical zones.
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She said these pensioners fall within the purview of PTAD because they all retired under the Defined Benefit Scheme, adding that “Before we bring in people into the pension payroll, we have to make sure they are eligible and bonafide pensioners by doing their biometrics and validate them before enrolling them on the payroll.”
“BOA has been taking care of their pension entitlements over these periods though it was a huge burden for them, because of that, in September 2020 the Ministry of Finance with the approval of President Muhammadu Buhari transformed them to PTAD for us to continue shouldering the responsibility of paying them their pension monthly,” she said.
Ejimeke, further stated that the exercise had already been concluded in the South-West zone with 101 pensioners verified. However, in North Central, the process is still ongoing.
The PTAD boss added that the next target is the South-South and South-East zones.
On her part, the Head of Human Resources of BOA, Ms Tsunda Yakubu said the bank was supporting PTAD in the exercise to help fill in the necessary gaps especially as it may relate to pensioners or their next of kin that might have lost some or all of the required documents.
“For instance, people that came from the North-East where insurgency might have made them lose their documents, when they come and at least provide their staff number, from our file we can provide them with the photocopy of their documents and they can go to a court to swear an affidavit that their document has been destroyed or missing and we then issue them the confirmation that they are true staff,” she added.
One of the pensioners, Muhammad Garba, who doubles as the secretary of the BOA Pensioner Association, said they hope when they finish the computation and documentation, it will transform into an upward review of their monthly stipends.
