PTAD conducts supplementary verification for police pensioners

THE Pension Transitional Arrangement Directorate (PTAD) is to conduct a supplementary verification exercise for all unverified police pensioners who retired on or before June 2007.

Scheduled to commence as from yesterday, May 25 to June 1, 2015 in Abuja, the exercise is for pensioners who did not participate in an earlier nationwide verification exercise concluded in March 2015.

The supplementary exercise is coming on the heels of post verification analysis, which revealed that 3,326 police pensioners on PTAD’s payroll did not turn up to be captured.

The development prompted the removal of the names of the unverified police pensioners from PTAD’s payroll and payment of their pensions suspended as from May 1, 2015 pending the outcome of the supplementary exercise.

According to a statement from PTAD, “The names of the affected unverified police pensioners numbering 3,326 have been removed from our payroll due to their non-participation in its just concluded nationwide verification exercise and will only be reinstated after they have been duly verified and their biometrics captured.”

Part of the statement read: “The removal of unverified police pensioners from PTAD’s payroll is to clean up and give credibility to our police pensioners”, adding that the removal of the affected names as well as the call for supplementary verification is necessary to ensure pension is paid to genuine pensioners only”.

The statement added: “The question is how long are we supposed to pay this group of people who have not turned up to be captured after repeated calls for them to do so? “Between December 2014 and March 2015, PTAD went to all the geopolitical zones to verify and capture all police pensioners.

The exercise was conducted in 18 cities across the country with adequate publicity on national radio, television and print media as well as SMS messages to the targeted pensioners.

“The Association of Retired Police Officers of Nigeria (ARPON) was equally engaged to help us reach out to all pensioners to come for the verification but post verification analysis however indicates that 3,326 police pensioners on PTAD’s payroll did not turn up for the exercise,” the statement added.

The statement enjoined affected police pensioners to bring along the original and photocopies of letter/gazette of first appointment, letter of last promotion, letter of retirement, duly signed NUBAN bank statement with bank logo, and letter of introduction from last Command of service