PenCom to rounds up pre- retirement verification for 2020 retirees on August 2

The National Pension Commission (PenCom) has said its pre-retirement verification exercise for 2020 retirees from Federal Government Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) would end on Aug. 2.

The Head, Corporate Affairs and Communication of PenCom, Mr Peter Aghahowa said this on Thursday in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos.

NAN reports that the pension industry regulator had on June 17 said about 12,000 employees from MDAs were expected to participate in the pre-retirement verification in 30 centers across the federation.

Some of the centres included Gombe, Benin, Ibadan, Enugu, Sokoto, Kaduna, Port Harcourt, Federal Capital Territory (FCT).

The PenCom spokesman said the commission is striving hard to ensure the country’s pension system gets to a point of “no blame’’.

Aghahowa posited that the pre-retirement workshops, verification and enrollment exercise was to ensure accurate computation of retirement benefits.

“If PenCom knew the retirees could be denied their benefits, why will it commit so much time, energy and resources for the exercise? he said.

Aghahowa commended the employees for coming out massively as directed by PenCom for the verification.

Mrs Bello Fadaka, the Deputy Registrar, University of Lagos, after her verification, commended PenCom on the thorough process.

She, however urged the commission to ensure that states that are yet to join Contributory Pension Scheme to do so, to avoid unwarranted elongation of gratuity payments.

“For us working for federal government we are lucky when it comes to gratuity payments, because it is not delayed for long compared to people who retired under states.

“I know a friend of mine who retired for long from state service and she is yet to collect her gratuity,” she said.

She further advised PenCom to consider on-line verification in the future.

Another retiree, Prof. Ajeyalemi Duru, urged President Muhammadu Buhari to ensure that authorities charged with the responsibility of overseeing pension funds do not embezzle it.