Ebere Nwoji
A group of pensioners, under the aegis of Association of Retired Federal Senior Public Officers of Nigeria (ARFESPON), has accused the management of the Pension Transitional Arrangement Directorate (PTAD) of truncating federal government’s plans and intentions to make life better for pensioners by overruling a table for payment of new national minimum wage for pensioners set up by salaries and wages commission and approved by federal government.
ARFESPON also said the federal Ministry of Finance was insensitive in carrying out its supervisory functions on PTAD.
Alleging that the agency operates as a parallel government by introducing its own pension benefits payment table which disrupted and brought down officers from their genuine grade level on retirement to lower salary grade level, ARFESPON wondered what the PTAD’s supervisory ministry and the minister was doing to checkmate its actions and stop it from operating a parallel government.
President of ARFESPON Lagos branch, Mr Olufemi Odewabi, disclosed this in his remarks at the end of the year party of the group held in Lagos.
He said: “Attention of some relative functionaries and offices had been variously drawn to this shortcomings it is rather unfortunate that the offices of Head of Service and secretary of the federal government have not been seen or heard to be reacting to correcting these anomalies.This anomalies have been highlighted by various groups for long this non- action is tantamount to compromise and endorsement of the poor attitude of PTAD.”
He pointed out that if the office of the auditor general of the federation still has the mandatory responsibility to audit the allocation and disbursement of funds for federal offices, then something must be done.
When THISDAY contacted PTAD on this, the Head Corporate Communications of the agency, Mr Gbenga Ajayi, said the table of benefit used by PTAD was only the one approved by the Salaries and Wages Commission and that the agency did not at any time short changed any pensioner.
He said what happened was that before the creation of PTAD, the agency inherited a pay roll from the then head of service and no body knows how it came about the modalities used in determining which retiree earns what.
He said some of the pensioners bribed their ways to be earning higher than others but now that PTAD has been digitalised everything has been normalised so that people who retired on the same grade level at the same time earn the same benefits.
He said currently nobody could cheat any other as what the system calculates according to government scale and table of payment is what each pensioner receives.
