The Pension Transitional Arrangement Directorate (PTAD) has held a meeting with stakeholders including Pension Union Executives and Pension Desk Officers of the Power and Transport Sector. Also in attendance were representatives from the National Pension Commission (PenCom), National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) and SERVICOM.

The Executive Secretary represented by the Director, Pensioner Support Services Department (PSSD), Mrs. Nneka Obiamalu explained that the meeting was to explain the outcome of the back-end computation project undertaken by the Parastatals Pension Department to address the challenges encountered with inherited monthly pension and related pensioners records at the time PTAD took over the payment of pensions to Parastatals pensioners under the Defined Benefit Scheme.

Some of the challenges include the absence of a comprehensive and integrated database of pensioners to aid a conclusive determination of eligibility, qualification and entitlements, due to non-availability of verification records for the pensioners; complaints of short-payment of pension and accrued arrears as a result of claims of non-harmonisation and/or wrong placement at enrolment; and incomplete career and related records of pensioners to aid a quick and conclusive resolution of complaints, etc.

In an elaborate presentation, the Director, Parastatals Pension Department (PaPD), Mr. Kabiru Yusuf explained that PTAD initiated a back end computation project to validate the detailed records of pensioners captured during the 2019 nationwide field verification exercise and re-compute the monthly pension of the pensioners based on their career records, relevant salary structure and applicable pension increments.

He further clarified that it is the computed monthly pension derived from this project that, starting from July 2023, would be implemented in the pension payroll to replace the inherited monthly pension that was received at the time PTAD took over pension payments; thereby addressing complaints of over and short/under payments.

He stated that letters showing the pensioner’s career details and other parameters used for the computation and final pension entitlements would be dispatched to all 17,157 pensioners of the 25 agencies under the Power and Transport Sector comprising the Nigeria Railway Corporation (NRC), River Basin Development Authorities (RBDA) and Steel Companies.

In their response, the Pension Desk Officers (PDOs) and Pension Union Executives commended PTAD for the comprehensive validation and computation exercise leading to the outcome presented. However, some of the Union Executives pleaded for a delay in the implementation to enable them explain to their members. Furthermore, others were of the opinion that the implementation should go on as proposed in July 2023 payroll explaining that it would allow all affected pensioners to ascertain the accuracy and completeness of their computation and submit their complaints, if there is any.

The back-end project was officially kicked off in November 2022 with the PHCN Sector which comprises 9,490 pensioners.