Pensioners Urges PTAD to Revert to Use of Approved Scale in Benefits Payment

Ebere Nwoji

A group of pensioners under the aegis of Association of Retired Federal Senior Public Officers of Nigeria (ARFESPON), has called on the management of the Pension Transitional Arrangement Directorate (PTAD), to revert to the use of officially approved monthly benefit payment structure recommended by the Salaries and Wages Commission in payment of its members’ monthly pension benefits.

They called on PTAD to jettison its self designed payment structure that short pays pensioners every month.

The group also urged PTAD to ensure the implementation of section 173 of Nigerian constitution, which advocates for automatic increase in pension benefits anytime there was increase in salaries and allowances for serving employees of government.

It complained that PTAD had vowed not to implement the aspect of Nigerian constitution on increase in pension benefits every five years if there was no salary increase for serving government workers.

The Chairman of ARFESPON Lagos Chapter, Mr Olufemi Odewabi, who made this call at the group’s meeting in Lagos recently urged the Executive Secretary of PTAD, Dr Chioma Ejikeme, to cease the opportunity of her second coming as PTAD Executive Secretary to correct some mistakes and maltreatments she meted out to pensioners during her first tenure in office.

Odewabi told journalists at the meeting that Salaries and Wages commission had prepared a salary structure based on minimum wage on which his members’ monthly benefits payments should be based but that PTAD on its own raised a different salary structure, which it uses in paying pensioners’ monthly benefits.