THISDAY

Ikpeazor: With TSA, Pension Funds Abuse Over

- Obinna Chima

Executive Secretary, Pension Transition­al Arrangemen­t Directorat­e (PTAD), Mrs. Sharon Ikeazor yesterday said the implementa­tion of the Treasury Single Account (TSA) by the federal government has brought to an end, all forms of abuses and misappropr­iation of pension funds in the civil service.

She added that the ongoing verificati­on exercise for federal service pensioners across the country will be the last time it would be conducted as the agency seeks to rely on biometric data to make payments henceforth.

The verificati­on exercise is ongoing in South West states including Ekiti, Ondo and Osun States.

Speaking to journalist­s in Ado-Ekiti, the state capital, Ikeazor said it would be the last time a physical verificati­on is conducted for pensioners- most of whom are now too weak and aged to withstand the rigours of the exercise.

Rather, she said the federal government will now rely on biometrics, the bank verificati­on number (BVN) and individual attestatio­n with an innovative ‘I’m Alive’ platform created by the agency to credit pensioners’ accounts.

She hopes the secure platforms to verify payment will outlive her tenure and wipe out corruption in pension administra­tion.

However, she promised that verified pensioners with receive their payments within the next four months.

Ikeazor said: “PTAD does not keep money in commercial banks, we are a treasury funded agency- so all the money that is budgetted for and given to PTAD is in the TSA account; what we do is to raise the electronic vouchers in PTAD and the pensioners get their payment directly into their accounts; there’s no more paying of cheques, there’s no more handling of physical cash for payment of pensions. So all the pensioners wait for is the alert which they call they melody and that’s why they said PTAD is a melody.”

She said PTAD had inherited a data system which “we cannot verify that data because you had a lot of people either on over payments or under payments.”

“Again, last year December, we had to look through our data base to sanitise it and we found 15,600 bank accounts without BVN and that presuppose­s that they are ghost pensioners.”

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